Have you ever kept a letter? Maybe a love letter or something a dear friend of yours have written or even just a postcard? Have you locked it in a box or tucked it in a corner for years and years to read it again and again when you're having a nostalgic day?

I keep literally everything in a big folder in my book shelf. It was once a binder full with sheets of a brand that was pretty popular when I was a kid (for all my fellow German readers: Did you also collect tons of Diddl sheets? In elementary school we literally turned it into a trading thingy) but then I started writing to pen pals so I had to re-purpose it. Over time, a lot of letters were added, those of my internet best friend, postcards or letters my elementary school best friend and I wrote at home and traded at school up until we started a whole sort of clique in which we mostly traded said letters.

Sometimes I read through them again (especially all the drama - if only I knew what was still up for me). Of course I notice the pages and the ink slowly wear off the more I read through them. And it makes me kind of sad - what if all these memories are someday just gone?

But that's the thing with memories - they wear off, they fade away and sometimes we forget even the best moments we ever had just because they were replaced by, well, just better ones. Or we feel such a distance that we cannot remember the feeling anymore.

I got that with a lot of people my younger self would say I had a crush on. What did it feel like? What made me like them? What were those special moments I clung onto at night? Why does it feel so irrational to ever have fallen for that person?

Whenever it hits me, I feel a bit sad. Because I realize: Feelings fade, too. And sometimes you just want to forget how special someone made you feel but over time, all of it loses its spark and you feel alienated from your feelings.

I don't want to forget the freedom I felt as a kid, running around on our lawn, dancing and singing and building tree houses in the woods and doing pranks on our neighbors - only to ring the bell and leave them some flowers to make them smile. I don't want to forget the way it felt when we moved here, how it was all exciting and new, I want to be able to remember those moments when I felt like I truly belonged somewhere - the list goes on and on.

But maybe there's also something comforting to it. Because even if you feel like you'll never get over this loss, or this heartbreak or that version of yourself you once lost - it will pass. As everything does in life. Maybe I'll just wake up one day and won't remember him. Or one day I might have find my purpose in life along the way.

It can happen. It happens. I barely remember 2014, aka the worst year of my life, anymore. Not because the lessons I learned are not important, but more because I found my place and I learned to love myself so the words they used to hurt me don't mean anything to me anymore.

Isn't it beautiful? How we cling to feelings and memories as if they were our favorite teddy bear but at the same time we sometimes can't wait to let them go?

I think there's something extraordinary about it. About life, how it all works out in the end. And someday, even if you can't remember certain things, you'll find a life of your own without them (and maybe you'll someday meet someone from your elementary school class again - and you'll just talk about life and laugh at the good old times).

xxx Sarah