Day Four: Keepsakes, Tokens and Junk

I received a great card from my birthday twin Amy the other day. It was sweet sentiment that opened up to a whole lot of wisdom, and thoughts on how her life would be lived from this new moment on.
There was so much RIGHT about it.
Living well - respecting your body and the planet in terms of how you eat.
Being good to yourself and others.
Not putting up with relationship bullshit...and letting go of the things that tied you to them. Most of it was in reference to inexcusable behaviors and emotional baggage, but it got me thinking about the more tangible things that are left behind as well when we decide that we're calling it quits.

Former boyfriends still have things of mine - DVDs, books, even a favorite bra that never came home (gone but not forgotten). I'm still sad about those DVDs. (Don't accept a DVD loan if your intent is to break up with the person! It's just mean!) Argh. Once the relationship is over, I tend to bin the wreckage - I barely have room for my stuff, much less my stuff and yours, ex-boyfriends. It's not like I set that shit on fire, a la Waiting to Exhale, but I throw it out.

(Boom. Bitch. Burn.)

For reasons inexplicable, I can't get rid of the T-shirt P gave me for my last birthday, or the chapstick he pressed into my hand the last time I saw him. He loved to give me stuff from the store where he works. There is no logical explanation for why these things remain. I've disposed of the photos, the letters and emails, blocked any incoming email, deleted his number and got rid of "our stuff." I can't wear the shirt. It's buried in the back of the bottom drawer. It was a token of love, a remembrance of an inside joke from someone who doesn't want to remember they loved me. Maybe it's a bad joke now. I don't want him back. I don't think I want to really ever see him again. Why keep it? I loved the shirt when he gave it to me. It's such a mixed memory now. Perhaps I worry that no man will ever love me enough to give me a T-shirt again. Sometimes I am so pathetic it hurts. The chapstick I keep because it's actually super high quality and my lips get all sorts of jacked up in wintertime.

I had a similar situation a few years back with D. This time it was a ring, (Before you gasp and clutch your pearls, it was not that type of ring! I would have mentioned something in the previous post!) a lovely little silver bobble with a small purple stone in the middle. Because D travelled all the time for work, a lot of our relationship played out over the phone as he galivanted around place to place. The day I got it, we were on the phone as I browsed through the Portobello Road market - "street where the riches of ages are sold." It's the prime place for knick-knacks and trinkets in London and I love it. So D and I were talking, and he'd been telling me he'd just seen a lady who looked exactly like me - which happens quite frequently - but this lady was apparently black, which never happens. Neither of us had a camera phone! To this day I wonder about her.... Anyway, I approached a little jewelry stand and instantly picked up the ring. I told him I'd just found the best little ring that fit my crazy fingers and it was only 5 quid! He sweetly said "I wish I was there to buy it for you." And I, like a goon, just melted. We'd talked about marriage oh-so-briefly. Like fleeting, blink-and-you'll miss that he just mentioned marrying me. So that was our ring. When D up and vanished a few months later (he didn't die or anything. That was my first thought. But no, his GChat and Facebook was still running, so he wasn't dead, he just didn't want to be my boyfriend anymore and didn't have the stones to say so) I looked at the ring with loathing. It was a symbol of something that had failed really spectacularly. Or was never true to begin with. I remember standing by the Thames and rolling it back and forth in my fingers, and considered tossing it dramatically (like Maverick throws Goose's dogtags in Top Gun) into the water.

I looked down at the ring and didn't really want to let it go. It wasn't the ring's fault D was such a D-Bag (hahaha....burn). I liked the ring. Purple looks nice on me. So I pocketed it, and put it somewhere I wouldn't have to think about it, or the man who'd insinuated it was a precursor to something more. A long time passed until I pulled that ring out again, but when I wore it, it didn't hurt anymore. It didn't look or feel like failure. It looked like a beautiful ring that I got for a steal in my favorite marketplace.

So my hope is that the T-shirt will languish in the back of my drawer for a long time. Maybe it will magically get softer and look like a cool old band t-shirt too. And a few months, maybe even years from now, I'll put it on and I won't think of how P and I imploded. It'll just be a funny old shirt.