In an incomprehensible and bold move, I dashed into my mother’s closet and took back my box of Big D things. It was stupid, perhaps, especially if she notices. But it was… necessary? It was strange to have two years of my love life sitting at the bottom of her closet, underneath her pantyhose and leather handbags.
I think it will be necessary, also, for me to actually get rid of all these stuff sometime in the future. Like, throw it away, or bury it… (burning it would be too angry…!) Do I need to get rid of what remains of us in order to move on? (or rather, did he get rid of his box of my things?)
As I was organizing the contents of the box, I couldn’t help but remember specific things we did. I still had such a photographic memory of what he gave me over the two years: a business card holder when I got my first summer desk job, a tile from Mexico with our number on it, a t-shirt that read “I <3 my physics geek”. We kept a notebook throughout much of our relationship, kind of like a diary to one another, because we didn’t see each other as nearly often as we wanted to. He wrote things like “I hope you don’t cheat on me in Taiwan…” and “I can’t until we live together; learning from a hot girl is a lot better than learning from a sheet of paper.”
I couldn’t help but ask stupid, instinctive questions to myself like, “How could something like that turn into something that it is now?” Big D and I haven’t written to each other in weeks, haven’t spoken in months, much less seen each other. I know that he has lost the desire to stay in touch, much less spend some time to travel to see me.
It always takes two people to start a relationship, but only one to end it.
