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.
