Best Laid Plans

I’m almost to the bottom of my one remaining garbage bag.  The bag is full of worn out items, but not items that brought me joy. Instead, they are the pieces of all the ways to organize everything I was supposed to do.  At least, that's what I told myself.  Or, what someone else told me.  Some of the bag’s contents are recent.  Others have been buried in crevasses and closets for years.  Still, the contents will end up the same place.  The fact that I did not have to acknowledge them piled in a corner until now does not change their history.  Nor does this bag change the reality that the items which escaped this bag only disappeared from view.  Scattered.

The garbage bag.  I’m almost to the bottom of the garbage bag for the second time, because I’ve had to take things out and put things back.  The piles around my room are less except that means that I’ve only dispersed them further.  Some were mailed far away.  Others have simply been split apart and scattered around the yard.  They’re hidden, mostly, except I’ll always know they’re there because I was here.  We can never erase our impact completely.

"I have this metal," I hold out items to my father. He must know better where it could still be used. Days later I find the pieces scattered around the house. Some he wants to keep. Others he throws away.

"No. That's not the point. I'm not looking for the easy way out." I gather the items. "You've answered my question." Which is he's not the answer, though I had hoped he was the easy answer. Or maybe even, an easy out. 

The thin, smooth plastic barely divides what I decided to set apart. It easily rips to spill the results back into the world. I must carry that bag to the garbage can, carefully.  The truck will pause and pick it up.  Inevitably, bits will bounce up and free from the truck bed. Eventually, my waste will be piled on top of everyone else’s.  For uncounted years these discarded materials will take up space.

The garbage bag is full of twisted metal pulled from notebooks and plastic spirals from planners.  Notes. Everything on paper has already gone up in smoke.  Ideas unattached until the world breathed them in again in a new form. The best laid plans, and yet I must accept my own impact.  If I could go back, I would do better.  Change how I engaged, what I prioritized, the ways I believed I could create change. I tried, as hard as I could.  I'm still trying.  Perhaps not hard enough. To reduce harm.