Graveyard of relationships past
You know what no one tells you? What the fuck do you do with the remnants of an dead relationship. Do you toss out the photos? The letters, notes, emails, and whatnot? I am not a burner by nature, so setting them alight seems forced and silly, not to mention that in at least one case, I paid someone to take pictures of us. In retrospect, that seems kind of hysterical, given my aversion to the camera.
Here’s another thing. If you had a rich and storied text-based history, do you just fucking nuke the electronic history? My inner attorney says I cannot delete anything, but my outward neat freak says clean it the fuck up. I have a box underneath my nightstand that holds my wedding pictures and I ignore it the way I ignore my archived emails. I have as hard a time imagining myself tossing out the wedding album as I do deleting emails and IMs of another relationship. The fuck are you supposed to do? Tossing (or deleting) it seems like a weird version of denial, but keeping it is probably worse, even if you never look at it.
I hate clutter generally, so I think I know the answer, but my inner, very dormant sentimentalist has no idea what to do. I think I am living amongst ghosts that can exist just fine in my brain, sans pictures or emails, or any other tangible reminders of a relationship that is six feet under, so getting rid of the obvious relics should be a no-brainer. Yet throwing them out, literally or digitally, seems kind of childish and petty as well. It is history, and you can’t erase it, even if you can throw it out.
And therein probably lies the answer. Throw it out, even though you know you cannot erase history.
Whoa. Was just going to write something along these same lines, luckily Karion has done a much better job than I would have done. I’ve been applying to jobs and had a first round of interviews. Stuffed away in my nice interview “bag” were the letters I had received from my ex. I’m not sure why I put them there - but I opened one up, read the first line and had to put it back. Ironically today is my ex’s birthday.
I ended it. So it should’ve been easy to purge out “the clutter.” But when we broke up, I hated going back to my apartment. Of the photos I had framed up on my walls and on my dresser, a significant portion were photos of us. How was I going to take them down? And, after that what do I do with them? So, logically, I bought a six pack of Blue Moon, an orange, and popped in the first season of Scrubs.
Who knows whether the tears were from the ending of a relationship, or that Scrubs episode where the old lady dies, or the fact that I was half buzzed. I guess it doesn’t really matter.
But I kept the photos. Cause in those photos, I was happy at that moment. So I still have these letters, I still have the contract for the wedding reception, and I still have the photos. My graveyard is a small box - which is no way proportional to the relationship, as it was a significant amount of time.
A small box isn’t to much clutter….Right?
