After the Relationship has ended – what do you DO with this stuff?

“Grow old with me,” he said, “the best is yet to be.”
“I love you,” he said.
“To my darling wife,” he said. And so on, and so on: I reckon I had the best part of a kilo of saved love letters and notes from my last husband, all professing his undying love and admiration for me. And even after the dirty rat left me when I was severely ill, and then still wanted to sleep with me a couple of years after our separation and several months into HIS new relationship, I was still hanging onto all of his love letters!

And not only that, but after several house moves and relationships between that marriage, and the marriage to the FOMC (father of my children), I still had all the love letters, notes, and nasty divorce letters from him!

I KNEW that I should throw them all.  My counsellor at one stage advised me to have a ceremony, create a little ‘funeral pyre’, and get rid of all this stuff! But as a writer and diarist, I found it all so hard to throw away, after all ‘one day’ I might go back through it all and write a book, or a self-help guide, or something: who knew? And it was all good, rich, resource material and just when I threw it away, I would probably find that I could actually use it!

Even with clothing, for example, many is the time I have driven around for weeks with a bag of clothes for charity in the boot of my car, only for them to gradually find their way back into the closet, when I started asking myself “What did I do with that blouse/jacket/pair of shoes? Oh yes, in the op-shop bag,” and out it came again.

But getting back to the memories. I used to look at the cards sometimes, late at night over wine and tears, and think to myself, ‘how he could he say and mean all those beautiful things, and leave me? How can he not love me anymore?’ It was agonising. So eventually I stopped looking at them, but still, I did not throw them away, but took them with me when I moved.

Well, no more. I’m moving house again, and this time, they are NOT coming with me. And I am not giving them any special ceremony, or burning them, they are just in the rubbish bag with the veggie peelings (I don’t compost – yet!) and other detritus, so I certainly won’t be dump diving to retrieve them! After all, in the end they are only words, and as my ex constantly reminded me, “Actions speak louder than words.” And he certainly proved that to be true.

So, I have yet to see if unloading this psychological clutter will make a difference to me, I shall observe and report back to y’all at a later date, I have to get back to my packing now!