What objects tell the story of your life? - No.1

To say the least, I have collected a lot of awards over the years. In my room there lives a shelf of boxes, filled with medals and awards from all sorts of activities I have been a part of. Well, at least most of them are medals and awards. Thrown in there are also some random fun objects or gadgets that I was able to get my hands on. But what makes my collection of stuff so interesting is the different parts of my life that you can see from it. Probably the most important was my gymnastics experience.

It all started with my career in gymnastics, which was the source of most of my collection. I was just a young little kid interested in a new thing every day, and when I always asked for advice from my parents. I was pretty stupid. However, physical sports seemed like an actual skill of mine, and my parents saw gymnastics as the perfect sport to get me into. When I eventually became a decent gymnast and obtained my first medals, I remember asking my father what to do with them on the way home from that competition. I’m pretty sure he laughed, then going on to say something along the lines of: 

“These represent something you have done. One day if you forget your past life, you will have something to remind yourself of who you were”. Those probably weren’t the actual words he said to me because I have a terrible memory, but whatever he said that day stuck with me. 

Of course I continued to do gymnastics, but it would only take me so far. Through elementary school, it became who I was. I became a part of a great community at the club I went to, creating new friends and meeting people I wouldn’t have known otherwise. As the years went by, I gained more and more medals and awards. Some have specific importance over others. One in particular, a paper plaque given to me by the coach during a ceremony, is to me the most significant. A description of me by my coach was written on it, “Goofy but good”, along with the names of my team members. It reminds me of who I was to others. Other medals serve as reminders for other events, like a trophy I was given at a competition where I fractured my knee. Especially with my memory, I keep these to remind me.

Anytime I was given something, anything, it was important to me. Throwing it away felt wrong to me, as if I was throwing away the memories of my life. I just couldn’t. Every gift was thought about by someone, and served a purpose as an indication of past events. At least for me, these were one of the few ways I could record my early life. When diaries failed for me, collecting worked.

I didn’t write about my collection of medals to boast about my accomplishments, but rather to help showcase the experiences I have been through. My ego doesn’t become boosted everytime I look at it, nor do I take great satisfaction in making myself look better to others. To me, each medal holds an important memory of an experience. With more and more, a story takes shape. You could say I’m a bit of a hoarder for caring so much about such insignificant things, but for once it created something special to me. A memory of my past.

Questions:

I was thinking of expanding this topic of objects to every activity in my life, not just gymnastics, but as I wrote more and more it seemed less possible. Should I try and shorten it and include my other activities or not? Other feedback is also greatly appreciated.