Hoarding Nostalgia

I am someone who doesn’t really like to throw things away.  Case in point: I have this old, beaten up messenger bag that has been with me since 2005.  I started using it regularly in 2006, and it basically became the thing I carried with me everywhere I went. I stuffed things into it, forced its buckles to snap shut - tore at it, dragged it through the rain, threw it, dropped it, scraped it against all manner of things.  Surprisingly, though I imagined myself carrying this messenger bag, which I began to call my “murse” throughout the streets of lower manhattan (and I did - my senior year at NYU), I mostly toted it with me in Northern NY - to and from work at this crappy little water park called the Enchanted Forest/Water Safari. No one even bothered to make fun of me, because they knew I didn’t care.  When I moved on to Columbus to attend The Ohio State University, the bag came with me.  I carried it with me everywhere.  It became rather threadbare.  It came with me still to Stony Brook, NY, to my first professional job.  It’s with me now in Montclair, NJ.