Spiritual Audit

Some people balance their checkbooks at night. I balance boxes of old paper.

Crumpled envelopes, folded notes, condolence cards, love letters—all of it stacked like a shoebox full of receipts for a life I once lived. It feels like a spiritual audit.

Every scrap is a line item. Every smudged doodle or crude joke from a friend goes in the assets column of proof that I wasn't alone. Every love letter gets filed under liabilities: evidence that I once mattered in a way I sometimes don't believe anymore.

And the condolence cards? They're in the loss prevention wing of the ledger. Proof that when my parents and friends died, the world noticed.

The problem is the balance sheet never closes.

At 2:30 a.m. I sit awake, freaked out, staring at handwriting that feels more like fossils than ink. People barely write anymore. Some of the names in these envelopes don't even show up online now. Their absence is heavier than the box itself.

So what do I do?

Do I keep hauling these records around just in case Eternity demands documentation? Or do I trust that the real audit has already been done?

That the proof of love and grief and belonging is stamped all over me, whether I keep the paper or not.

This has been a love letter to a forgotten thing.

And maybe this whole exercise is nothing more than me circling totals in red ink and asking if I still balance out.