Everyone I’ve loved has helped build who I am, and sentimental souvenirs prove that pieces of them are always with me.

by Ben Bagley

I am a hoarder.

Not in a physical way like the ones on TV, but rather as an emotional historian. Instead of keeping 37 broken microwaves in my attic, I hold on to every single sentiment I have lived through, and I exist today as a mosaic of experiences and memories from loved ones in my life.

I am sentimental, I love deeply and am loyal to the ones I love.

I don’t like to be alone, physically or emotionally. I get bored when I have nobody to spend time with, and I feel uneasy when I am emotionally unchaperoned. Now, as a single 22-year-old about to move across the country for the first time in his life, I feel alone.

Then, I look around my room.

I’ve had a few girlfriends before, each one different from the last. Every relationship accentuated a different aspect of my personality, and every partner helped me grow in their own way. The Three Loves Theory by Mark Manson explains that people often fall in love three times in three different ways, each one its own attempt to find what true love really is.

Even though three of my loves have run their course through my life and have moved on, experiencing each of them has molded me emotionally. The person I am today is a conglomeration of lessons I’ve learned from the different people I’ve loved, and I remember these teachings through sentimental trinkets.

My life is filled with lessons learned and the knickknacks to match.

The first girl I ever loved was in high school: M. She and I were young and enthusiastic, our romance was passionate like a Spanish serenade on an acoustic guitar. We were juvenile emotional novices; every action we took hurt the other in a series of flashy, painful attempts to figure out what love really meant.

Our story was written over a tumultuous five years — we both saw other people, came back to each other in dramatic ways, shared precious core memories and then fought about nonsense with fiery conviction. We loved with pride and honest passion, but we loved like children.

Despite the challenges we thrust upon each other, I remember our relationship fondly. I admire the young man I used to be for waging his noble fight of intimate devotion.

When she left for college, which ended up being for good, I gifted her my favorite sweatshirt. It was a sentimental moment, and she promised to keep it safe. Two months later the breakup ensued, and my ninth-grade basketball hoodie wound up back on my doorstep in a busted-up cardboard box. Even though it is too small for me now, it still hangs with pride in my closet. I fought through years of turmoil for the person that I first loved, and even after it failed, I came out intact.

Now, every time I notice its gray threads peeking out of my collection of t-shirts, I remember that perseverance. I remember what I’ve learned, and I am reminded of my strength.

My first love and I broke up two months into my first year of college. I had freshly graduated from high school and was still unripe in my emotional maturation. I was ready to experience a more grown-up kind of passion. And there, just down the hall of my freshman dorm, lived C.

C was the second person I fell truly in love with. She was very similar to my mother; loving, goofy, smiley and pure. She showed me what it felt like to be loved with affection after I experienced a cold relationship in high school. I had grown used to my affection not being reciprocated; C was the first to show me love in the way that I provided others with.

She taught me what pure love can feel like when it goes both ways. I loved her, I worked to show her every day, and she worked just as hard to show me. She listened, she communicated and from her I learned how I deserve to feel. To this day, I value that feeling of being truly loved.

For my 20th birthday, she knitted me a blanket big enough for a queen-size bed. I struggled with self-confidence at that time, after high school left me believing that I did not deserve to be cared about. However, while anxiety was eating at my self-confidence, C was spending hours weaving her warmth into something that then brought warmth to me.

We’ve since broken up, but every night to this day when I snuggle under that blanket, I feel loved. I feel her love, and I remember what I deserve.

And then there was K.

She was more masculine, a tougher nut to crack. I had often felt misaligned with the masculine role in relationships, and her with the feminine. We clicked in a different way, letting our true colors bleed into each other in a way neither of us had experienced before. We were real. We were raw. We helped each other fall into our true identities. And we had fun.

K was adventurous. The pièce de résistance in our time together was a road trip from Seattle to San Francisco fueled by nearly 2000 miles worth of euphoria. We camped our way up the coast, and felt truly free in fresh cities where nobody knew our names.

At every new stop we bought souvenir stickers. When the trip concluded, we each decorated a water bottle with memories from our journey together. Every sticker was reminiscent of the story attached to it, each one representative of a moment precious to our hearts, forever frozen in time.

She soon enrolled in school across the country, and we drifted apart after a period of long-distance. The romantic experiences I had endured and learned from had led me to her, where I felt more like myself than I even knew possible.

Suddenly, she was gone. With her she took the person I’d entrusted with my true colors, and it caused my fragile heart to be restless and upset.

But when I see that water bottle sitting on my desk, each of those stickers from a memory locked in genuine joy, I remember everything we learned and how much she believed in me.

Instantly, peace returns.

When I look around my bedroom and when I look around my life, I see mementos of moments that created the person I am today. A poster from Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman concert that my childhood best friend surprised me with tickets to in 10th grade, a signed program from the final musical in high school my sister and I performed together, a recipe list titled “Kitchen Tips From Mom” that my mother made for me when I first moved away from home and a wall filled with polaroid pictures of friends and memories that I cherish.

The person that I’ve become and the person I am now is a reflection of the people who have built me. Those people, the lessons they’ve provided and the emotions we experienced together, make up who I am. I have met and grown to love many incredible people in my life, and from each of them I’ve taken a piece that helped me grow.

These items that I value prove that sentiment and serve as a constant, a valuable reminder that I have never, and will never, be alone in the universe. Those words ring true for all, and are exactly what this scared 22-year-old about to move across the country by himself needed to hear:

I am not alone.