The Dynamics of the Break-up

Cleaning through some old things yesterday, I found a letter to me from my ex-boyfriend, sent two months after we had broken up. Delighted at having the slightest distraction from my never-ending chores, I read through it a little. The time of our break-up is like a blur to me now. I don't even know why I still have these things. I suppose it's for times like these - to look back and rediscover what happened.

I realize now he wasn't always mean, but that he actually was serious about getting back together. I realize now that I got angry as I did to protect myself from falling into the same traps again. I realize now that he only got angry later, perhaps because I was rude, and perhaps because it was then clear that things were truly over. He was angry because he felt abandoned. I was angry because I'd felt like I'd fought for our relationship too long with very little to show for it. I wasn't happy. But I'd never been completely safe in what it was we had. There was something in him, in us, that made me needy, insecure and emotional. That made me not like myself. That something, I didn't need.

Yet later, after all was said and done I felt wretched, like I'd committed a horrible sin. There are always things that you wish could be said. Things that you wanted understood. Things that were lost in translation in the hostilities that took place between you. What would you say to that person were they to stand before you now? How could you explain that which happened so long ago? The memory scrambles to put it all back together the way it really happened, yet falls short somehow. We will never remember what happened, just our version. This is nothing but a mere part of the whole story.

I would say that I was sorry. That I didn't mean to hurt him. But that perhaps I had fallen out of love with him, perhaps the pain that I felt at seeing our picture turned down (so his mother wouldn't see), or hearing his lies, or seeing him sink yet again outweighed and overturned what I felt. At the end, I no longer felt. I did not miss,grieve or brood. At the end like all other practical matters, I moved on That is how I know it was not love that was keeping me there those last few months. It was exhaustion to do anything else.

The leftover feelings of guilt, of betrayal, of sad emptiness, are all gone now. The spot where they once lay is blank. I am free now of that period, free now of those emotions. I can put it behind me like all else that has transpired over the last 25 years.

What do you then do with the little objects, the photographs, the gifts and the keepsakes? Do you burn them? Do you give what you can to charity? Do you keep them tucked away in a little box awaiting re-opening at some later date? Or, like my ex, in a mixture of bitterness and practicality, do you pack them into a box and send them to the other person hoping they'll have some use for it? That is up to you. I keep my things in order to remember what was, and better understand it in relation to what is and what will be.