On Purging the Heart

Today I finished something that I started over the weekend: purging my romantic past.

As I clear out my apartment in preparation for my upcoming relocation overseas, I find myself having to part with keepsakes and knick-knacks that I just always assumed that I would keep. This weekend, I finally grew a quad and faced the collection I'd been dreading for quite a while.

I've been hemming and hawing over my 10-year-old box of keepsakes and love letters from my first boyfriend for several years. Part of me says "Keep it! It was a lovely time in your life! Why not keep those love letters to read when you're old and grizzled to remind you of your glorious Springtime? Something to show your grandkids!" the other part says "Toss it! You need to move on. Keeping that stuff will keep you living in the past, and you need look to the future! You will make wonderful new memories if you just give yourself the chance!"

Whenever I thought of that box of stuff, words from my favourite comedian, Dylan Moran always came to mind:

And to aid that memory, the woman would open a hatbox full of precious things: the Curly-Wurly wrapper that meant SO MUCH!!! The bundle of letters too painful to look at OR throw away. They have to be kept so they can never be looked at!



And that's precisely what I had. And it was as ridiculous as he made it sound. But I never had the heart to throw any of it out, simply because that Curly-Wurly wrapper DID mean so much to me! Not just that, but break up letters and arguments. I kept them to reassure myself that even in the face of adversity and heartbreak, I was able to stay level-headed and reasonable and kind. It was my way of coping with heartache.

But this weekend, I was faced with the fact that I just can't take it all with me. And it's time to move on, both romantically and in the greater sense of my life. So I decided that it was time to start anew. Not only would that box of memories go, but so would all the other bits and bobs saved from previous romantic encounters. All the emails, love notes, break up letters, EVERYTHING.

So on Saturday, I emptied out the box of trinkets and keepsakes. The nicer things went into the goodwill box, the rest went into the trash. The love letters, though, I couldn't bear to throw away. It seemed disrespectful....So I read them all one last time, then took them down to the park to one of the firepits and burned them. It seemed more poetical that way.

Today, I finished the job by going through my email accounts and deleting everything that I'd kept from my exes, good and bad. 15 years worth of keepsake emails from my first boyfriend in high school all the way to my last lover a year and a half ago.

As of today, I am a clean slate: no baggage, no expectations. I'm not going to look back any longer, because there's nothing to look back at anymore. The memories will stay, but I'm no longer anchored to the past by physical, tangible things.

There's nowhere to go but up. To infinity and beyond. :)