very self-absorbed

you know, i've been writing alot about my mother. here we go again.
i went home this past thanksgiving. the brother and sisters were great. the food was great. but, the house was a roiling wreck -- a puss-filled, boil-squelching mess. (how a house can be "puss-filled" i don't know, but it's the perfect description, so there.)
from this experience, i have re-realized the answer to the "why does joy have a horror of clutter?" question. it's because my mother never throws anything away. therefore, i have to throw everything away. i have to purge my home of the sins of trash.
recently, however, i've been going through my old files, and i realized that throwing away my papers in fits of anger, or selling books in other fits of misplaced rage, or throwing away old shoes for that matter...sometimes it's...not so good.
i threw away a damaged disk three days ago. it was damaged, after all. the files were irretrievable. i hadn't missed them. i wasn't going to spend money on retrieving them. i'd tried all the free methods. it was fine. it was good. it was trash. yesterday, i realized that on that damaged disk rested the clean copies of my best college writing.
it's not much, my writing. but i think scribblers have this odd attachment to the things they've scratched in notebooks or, these days, saved in badly named word files. i do. now, i have more or less stopped writing. ok, i've pretty much called it quits, but what i wrote at one point still matters to me, because i take my old papers as evidence that i have lived. i've had thoughts. i've had opinions on the thoughts of others.
it's getting harder to remember things, and i mean anything, these days, and when i lose my papers it's like losing the possibility of finding myself again. and i don't know why that's important, and i suspect it isn't actually important. but still.
all of this means that the applying to grad school thing is hard, because i'm having to look for old writing, and every file i open reveals something i've lost. and every file i've lost makes me feel lost in that little girl "who am i?" sense that i had hoped was left behind with my outgrown gym uniform. i'm fighting back the very real urge to throw up. after that, i have to revise my resume.
and yes, that was about my mother.