Day Fifteen: Burn, Purge, Donate, Cleanse.Last night, I went through what are some of the last boxes my ex has sent me of ...stuff. I would say my stuff, but in reality, most of it was "our" stuff.
I've looked through at least a dozen boxes in the last two months. And while it sounds like there may be a few more on their way, I've gotten through the majority of it. Y'all. This part effing sucks. It feels like torture. I have sorted through the dishes we picked out together after our engagement. I've had to look through boxes of photos. Gifts that we made for each other. Reminders of trips together and weekends away and just every day life as a couple. You have to remember: we spent our entire adult life together. So everything that filled our apartment was bought together. Almost everything holds a memory. It took some time, but I have sorted everything into three categories: Save, Donate, and Burn. I'm saving things that don't trigger any immediate or overwhelming memories. Things like art supplies, furniture, kitchen knives, etc. Yes, if I think about it too much, I can remember when we bought them or a memory of us making Thanksgiving dinner, but it isn't an automatic emotional response. These things are also more practical items that I can replace over time if I need to, but are kind of needed to be a functioning adult. I'm donating things that have emotional attachments, but someone else could benefit from, rather than burning it all to a crisp. Some of these things are t-shirts of places we went or that I slept in, a few mugs, blankets/sheets/towels, books, etc. I no longer want these things around me, but I also feel like an asshole if I destroy them when I know there are other people who could use these things. I'm burning things that have a strong trigger response for me. I'm burning photos, our bucket list photo album, a sweatshirt, our "be in our wedding party" boxes, the painting with a personal note on the back, etc. Things that, if I see them one more time, I will explode into a million emotions. So, last night, I took the box of items to burn to a friends' house. I took a few shots of vodka, played some music, and started throwing things one by one on the fire. I chose what I wanted to burn in a very strategic order. The least emotionally attached objects were first. I didn't really feel much when I watched those items catch on fire. I felt--numb. Like it was just another task on my to-do list for the day. That continued until I got to the bottom of the box, to the three things I knew were the most emotionally charged: framed photos of us together, a "Come What May" painting he had done for me, and the stuffed bear that he had won from a claw machine on one of our first dates. I started at those things in the box for a good, long time. I could feel the anger rushing through me. How could he have thrown this all away? How could he do this to me--to us--after all these years? How could he go from kissing me and cuddling me in bed to not even wanting to hold my hand the very next day? What did I do to deserve this? Why is life so unfair? How did I draw the short stick of life--the one with numerous traumatic experiences, abusive relationships, a mother who abandoned me, and now a broken engagement and betrayed friendship? I grabbed the framed photographs of us smiling at one another and threw them on the fire. I watched the glass bubble. I watched our faces melt away. I quickly grabbed the painting, and tossed it on the flames. A friend asked, "How does it feel?" And I blurted out, "I'm going to cry." And I did. I cried and cried. I watched the words that used to mean so much to me fall away into nothing. I cried so hard that I couldn't talk. I stared into the light for a really, really long time before I picked up that stuffed bear. I thought about how happy I was when he gave it to me. I remembered our laughter as he won it from the claw machine. I remembered sleeping with it every night, especially on those nights when he wasn't there with me. I remembered moving it to every new dorm room, every new apartment or house... It was the reminder of how our friendship and relationship and partnership began. I thought about keeping it. And when that thought crossed my mind, I tossed it. I watched it disappear as I cried even more, surrounded be friends on both sides of me, supporting me as I watched the most symbolic item of the last eight years of my life fade away. That was not the response I expected. I thought I would feel empowered or that it would feel good to get rid of all of these reminders. But instead, I felt pain. I felt empty. I talked to my friend, Jesse, about it, and he told me this: "Yes, it can be easier to let go of some things when you pack it away in a box. You don't think about it, but there is a comfort in knowing that they are still there. That you can always go back and look at it. But by completely getting rid of these few things, you're going to cleanse your space. There is something...spiritual...about it. And while it may not feel like it right away, soon it will feel almost like you're free from it all. Nothing is holding you back and you're letting go." I'm thinking about that a lot today. Emerging from the flames, Farrah ♥
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
June 2018
Categories
All
|