Dear Diary,

Ever since that big box arrived, my life has gone downhill.

You know the box- the one Frank left in front of my house? The one he ditched-and-ran?

Well, up to that point, I had hope. I had opened myself up to being friends, and thought my phone call the previous Tuesday had conveyed that to Frank. I thought there might, just might, be a possibility that I would see Frank dancing that Sunday night. So I spent the majority of Sunday cleaning my apartment, figuring if I saw Frank at the place, he might give me a ride home, and we could talk. Maybe he'd come in, so I wanted the place to be neat.

Then, the phone call, the misery of dragging the box inside and opening it and the whole story. The reason the box is so big is because it's for my stereo. And we were supposed to keep the packaging because I can return it if anything goes wrong with it, but only if I have the original box. Frank was keeping it at his house since he has so much more space, but, obviously he was cutting every last string he could think of, hence, the box is now mine. But it's enormous, too big to fit in any of my closets.

So there the box sat, in my nice clean apartment. A terrible reminder. Then everything just started falling apart all around it. I went to turn the page on the calendar and the nail holding the calendar fell out of the wall. So I threw the calendar on top of the box. I tried on 3 different jackets for the job interview. The ones I didn't choose got thrown on the box. Pretty soon it didn't seem that important to keep anything neat anymore- clutter started building on the kitchen table, the chairs, the countertop. The box was just another reminder of my depressing failure. The civilization of my apartment was declining.

Soon I am wallowing amongst clutter- papers, clothes, cast-aside shoes. Every day feels more and more hopeless.

Because of that fucking box.

Last night, I couldn't stand it anymore.

The box is just symbolic of all this drama I'm talking about. Frank's control issue: his ability to just drop this huge thing in my living room and my life unravels around it, while he runs away. No accountability on his part, no need to stick around and process with me, even though he claims to still care about me so much.

So I emptied it. I put the styrofoam blocks in the closet. I flattened it out and stuck it behind a wardrobe. I hung some of my returned clothes in the closet. I threw away the dumb polyester lingerie that I never liked anyway, I just wore it because Frank bought it for me and I thought he'd like to see me in it. There was something deeply satisfying about mashing those pastel tap pants into the garbage can.

Now, I can rebuild, a little at a time. This magazine goes on the shelf. These shoes back in the closet. These papers can be filed, these thrown away.

Hopefully, the people of the Great City of Duck can unearth the wisdom that still lies beneath their crumbled libraries. Hopefully, with their knowledge of the past, this will never happen again.

Hopefully, but not likely.

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