Boxing

Published January 29, 2008

By Bridget Treco

Just when you close one box, somebody opens up another one.

I mean…not to be too cheesy. I actually mean it literally. Well, sort of…here’s what happened.

Over winter break, the night before I came back to school, I was fed up with an unattractive heap of stuff on my desk.

I felt like this heap was staring at me every night like a monkey on my back. It was, in fact, a heap of “old boyfriend stuff.” Cards, letters, gifts that I never used…just staring at me. But up until that night, I didn’t have the heart to get rid of it or at least stifle it.

The thing is, until I’m really over someone, I’m not ready to let all the stuff go. See, the stuff is what ties us to the person. After a bad breakup, there is no more verbal communication. So all you have left is the tangible proof, the physical evidence of what you had.

First you delete their number from your speed dial. Then you delete the text messages (for me, that was a big one, which took an embarrassingly long time to do).

Then, the e-mails, the pictures on your wall and desk, and then there are the gifts–the things they gave you that actually mean something. So, you can see why it was the hardest for me.

Why is it that the tangible gifts are so important? All our lives we’ve been taught that it’s not the physical things that matter, but the emotional ones. Perhaps it’s because we need something definitive and certain that we can put away and out of sight. With emotions, we can’t always do that, and it becomes too painful. But those gifts, those little things that were given to us, we can shut them out forever. In order to be open to new love, we have to close the box.

The relationship is over, and my feelings are finally starting to go, and it’s been too long. The heap needed to get gone. I was planning on just ripping everything up and stuffing it in the trash. Then I realized, I wasn’t bitter anymore. It’s over, and I’m content, and I needed to respond to this heap of pointless and irritating stuff, in the calmest way possible. I’d burn it.

That was only a joke. In reality, I got a box. I busted out some Michelle Branch, and I got really intense. I stuffed everything I could find that ever represented this person in the box. Then I screamed. And it was over. Now, he’s a box. He isn’t really a person in my life anymore. He’s just a box. In the best way possible, that is. I stashed it under my bed, just in case someday, for some reason, I wanted to remember what he was about.

It’s a closed case now, just like the relationship. But in my opinion, you can’t have the ability to think about someone else until the first box closes. So, like I said before, once you close one box, the big guy up there (or whatever force you prefer) opens up another one. At least, that’s what I’d like to think.

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