I’ve always thought that opening a box filled with things ends you in a spiral of memories. Never thought packing one would. This was until I began to frantically put my entire college life into one to avoid procrastinating. I stared at a room once filled with postcards on the wall, fairy lights hanging on my window, books with different colour spines sitting on my shelf and I thought to myself- what makes packing worse than unpacking?
As I stood wondering, a mental table of differences appeared in my brain with packing on one side and unpacking on the other. Almost like a question out of an exam that required me to answer for marks. What struck me was the realization that packing a box requires an unpacking of surroundings. I removed the Carpenters poster that was stuck above my bed, a disco ball hanging from my curtain rod that I stole from an event, the welcome back poster my roommate made for me and my panda stuffed toy that always got kicked around in my sleep. All these bits and pieces that didn’t have a story of their own at first, now sit taped up in a cardboard box with so many memories behind them.
Going back to the imaginary table of differences my brain made about packing vs. unpacking was when I found out for myself that packing felt more cruel. It was about deciding what parts of your life you were actively folding, stacking and taping shut. It forces you to confront the fact that moments don’t stay where they happened. They travel. With or without you.
Unpacking, on the other hand, is slightly less depressing honestly. It reflects subtle hints of new possibilities. You open a box and imagine where things might belong. You build a space forward. This however, was the opposite. Packing makes you look backward, piece by piece.
And maybe that’s why it feels heavier. Because in between wrapping fairy lights and stacking books, you’re also gathering different versions of yourself. The one who first moved in, the one who stayed up too late, the one who made the room feel like home without even realizing it. For someone who can get lazy very easily, it would be a lie to blame all my dislike for packing on nostalgia. A good thing to discover in the midst of this sappy process of packing is that the next time I go through the tiresome process of unpacking, there will be at least something positive to come out of it. Hope for starting new maybe, rather than the pain of packing things away.