In the same nook out in the garage where I found all my old concert tickets, I also found a file folder full of, for lack of a better term, “love notes”. I knew I had saved these somewhere, I had just forgot where. Since everybody else went to bed early Saturday night, I decided to give these old cards and notes the same treatment the concert tickets got — scan, and toss.
As I began scanning all those notes in I couldn’t help but to read some of them. It’s safe to say, my high school love life was pretty pathetic. Every relationship I was involved in was off balance, with either me liking the other person more than she liked me, or vice versa. Come to think of it, I guess a lot of relationships that don’t work out could be described that way.
Most of the things I hang on to give me happy memories when I pull them out from time to time and look at them … but almost none of these letters did. Mostly I was reminded of how things went wrong, of times I had hurt others, or others had hurt me. I thought about the relationships I had let go on too long and the ones that never had a chance. The author of every note I read either deserves an apology from me or owes me one.
The further I worked my way through the stack of keepsakes, the more depressed I got. Only a fourth of the way through, I decided to take a break. I walked out to the kitchen to fix myself a drink and saw Susan had fallen asleep on the couch sitting up with her laptop sitting running on her lap. Mason was asleep on the other couch, his blanket in the floor. I went and checked on Morgan who was asleep in her bed. While in Morgan’s room I picked up a random stuffed animal (Mike from Monsters, Inc) and, back in the living room, placed him on Susan’s laptop so she would laugh when she woke up and saw it. I picked Mason’s blanket up and draped it over him.
I then went back to my computer room, picked the entire pile of memories up and dumped them in the trash. For someone who throws very little away, this was surprisingly easy. Some things are just better left behind.
Awwww… good for you. I hear ya though. People are amazed that I throw away things like I do – my yearbooks, my prom dress (heck, my wedding dress). Those things don’t matter. My yearbooks were meaningless, my husband wasn’t in them, I was, but I didn’t like high school and frankly that was so long ago I don’t remember much and what I do remember, eh. Who cares. Life is sweet now, toss the bad stuff.
I toss a LOT though. I’m constantly throwing away stuff, it makes my friends a little uncomfortable. LOL
I think that’s more or less part of AA. Forgive when it’s needed, apologize if that’s needed, then move on. As far as keepsakes, keep the ones that make you smile and toss anything else. Just keeping things that hurt is masochistic. You have arrived! Give your sweet family a hug for me.
When I moved out of my apartment and into my future wife’s house I did a major clean up of the stuff I had. In a box I hadn’t looked through since I left for college were notes girls had sent me starting in middle school. I read them, laughed, and pitched them. Those letters were baggage that I had long forgotten about and didn’t want to carry around anymore.
I used to kid myself that I was pretty well immune to standard teen angst, and through college I maintained that I was a pretty stable and upstanding guy in high school – lots of friends, no goofy hormonal crises, etc.
Until the day I ran across a journal I had forgotten I kept in 11th grade. Ugh! Angst angst woe woe and pseudointellectual nonsense on every page. So embarrassing. Lesson learned. I dumped the journal in a gas station trash can.
That’s definitely the best kind of stuff to leave behind. I’m pretty sure I know where virtually all of my stuff like that ended up–in the recycle bin on my last day of my first job, sometime in November 1998. That was easy to do, because that relationship was part of the reason why I wanted to move. I needed to start over, and I couldn’t do it in that town, working at that job.
In the time since, I intentionally tossed as much of that kind of stuff as I could find as soon as I was certain a relationship was over. Here and there I’ve found a couple of notes and pictures that I somehow missed, but I get rid of them pretty quickly when it happens.
Is it sad that I don’t really have any love letters except from my wife?
@Josh: You nailed it, it’s just baggage. Twenty years is long enough to be hanging on to some of these things.
Good on ya son! Small steps…