where the fuck else could i have been keeping them

there must be another book box i'd forgotten about

fucking insane actually, that i've been living here for 6 years and i still have so many of my belongings in boxes, shoved away into a corner

at least one of which i apparently never opened that entire time

there are at least 4 books i can think of off the top of my head that didn't turn up, and they're all physically pretty large tomes. so if this missing box exists, it can't be, like, SMALL

found it! ok. they were hiding beneath all my plush toys/stuffed animals, in the box where i'm keeping those

but the box was still labeled "books" so i guess i just wasn't paying attention

follows my general pattern of packing heavy stuff in the bottom and filling the empty space with soft/light stuff to cushion it

...apparently i kept the original instruction manuals for pokemon red, blue, and yellow?? i wasn't even looking for those, but they're here

i remember throwing out all of my old SNES and N64 instruction manuals at some point (a fact i still deeply regret), so it's quite surprising to see any manuals survived that purge at all

ok. i pulled out some of my old favorites and some books i never finished reading. and a couple of the old plushes for good measure

it just sometimes weighs on me how i moved back home 6 years ago but never really "moved in" by actually unpacking my things. i just left most of my former life in boxes

partially because i didn't have a lot of space, partially because "moving in" just made me imagine having to move out again, partially because i didn't feel like i deserved to have things around me that made me happy

but i think i've managed to quell that anxiety a bit now by taking at least a few more things out

i don't actually... have enough shelf space for all these books. so they might just be sitting on my old desk for a while. but it made me happy to see them again

the "old favorites" in question, from yesterday and today: the Scott Pilgrim comics, the His Dark Materials series, The Wicked Years series, an omnibus collection of the first 5 Wizard of Oz novels, and an omnibus collection of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series

the ones i never finished: Machine of Death by Ryan North, Let It Snow by various authors including John Green, and War of the Ancients Archive, a... warcraft novel, i guess

a bizarre cross-section of the various sedimentary strata left by past versions of me