It was a strange feeling the other night when I was unpacking (still—i know, i know) and I came across a box full of old-boyfriend things.
Mostly why it’s been taking me so long to unpack is because of how much time I spend thinking about everything I take out of those boxes. When I packed them, of course, I didn’t pay much attention, just stacking things into boxes knowing that in two days there wouldn’t be a place for them there.
But when you’re unpacking, those things have a completely different impression—old cards, gifts from relatives who aren’t around anymore, photographs you barely remember being present for. It’s like when you’re picking things up in your hands, and turning them over and over again, you’re almost looking at someone else’s things, and at the memories of someone else’s life. Yours has moved on with you, and the things put in boxes are full of past-tenses, and nothing about where you are now is in past-tense.
But looking at boyfriend-things was different from friend-things and your-things and family-things. I felt even a deeper sense of disassociation than with the others. Reading notes and cards and looking at gifts and dried-out roses, I couldn’t help but smile at the thought of how much this all meant to me at some point—all of it. How easily I was swept up in the cliches and the words, the flowers and the perception that it was all something a teenage girl should have wanted. What someone else should have wanted.
Lately, I’ve been caught up in this idea of missing something like it—maybe not it exactly, per se, but something. But when placing everything back into its box and setting it in the back of my closet, I couldn’t help but realize how much my perspective on it all has changed too. To be honest, since being alone this past (almost) year, my depression doesn’t visit as often, i walk with my chin up higher, I have better relationships with all the other amazing people in my life, and i feel more beautiful than ever. It’s all very idealistic, i know—but if I can’t be idealistic about relationships, why not be idealistic about not being in one?
The girl in the box is not me.
