I am a packrat.

My room is a cove of items from my childhood- toys still collect dust in boxes in the bottom shelf of my bookshelf, still home to many picture books that I enjoyed in my early years and pictures that have faded in color, next to certificates yellowing behind more recent accolades. My closet holds unfinished Lego projects, old Shonen Jump magazines from my 2 year subscription in middle school and both my Boy Scout and Cub Scout uniforms. My drawers are an archive of classtime doodles, binders will bursting with schoolwork from whatever grade they were used in and my forgotten Yu-Gi-Oh! cards and handheld gaming systems.

Items that should have been cast away as soon as I outgrew them instead got stashed in every available space. I hold a connection to each and every item I possessed. Rather, I forge some arbitrary attachment to every item that I own, regardless of their actual importance in my life.

All through my life, I have worn out shoes and backpacks and papers and when the time had finally come to throw them out, I would kick and scream and cry. I always felt so connected to the items, even though I had no significant memories with them. I still vividly remember being forced to throw away one of my backpacks, my eyes watering as I lifted the trashcan lid, holding my backpack in my other hand for as long as I could. I suddenly tossed it into the trashcan, letting the lid fall as I ran back into the house and cried, cried, cried.

So last week, I surprised myself when I told my little cousin he could take some of my toys home with him. The “yes” had come out with almost a tone of carelessness, and I quickly reevaluated what I had just said. These toys were different from anything I had been forced to part from before. They WERE my childhood, items that were prevalent in almost every childhood memory I had.

One of the toys he asked for I remember receiving. It was a Power Rangers Megazord, one of my favorites. I remembered the first day I received it, how my hands shook as I held the shiny new figure from the weight of the toy and my excitement. I remembered the afternoons I had spent in the backyard with it, battling invisible enemies and finding new configurations for it. So why would I be so willing to give something I was so attached to away?

Then I remembered my cousin’s face all the times he came over just to play with it. He battled with his own imaginary enemies, he fiddled with its “instructed” formation and created his own combinations, same as me. If I had any time to give it away, there would be no better time than now, when I would be going to college. If I had any person to hand it to, there would be no better child than he, the boy who would care for it as I did, as I have forgotten to. The first step to becoming an adult would start with throwing away the chains of my childish antics.

So I didn’t cry as I watched him walk out of my house with a box full of my old toys. I knew what he would do with those pieces from my childhood. I knew that I might never see them in the same condition I left them. But I was relieved because I knew that they would not be unused because I left. I knew I would not have to face another trash can.

My room is still filled with childhood pieces left to be taken away by more deserving children. But in the spaces left by the pieces I gave today, I can hoard pieces from the beginning of my adult life. I am still a packrat. But I am no longer attached.