A Modern Way of Letting Go

Before webmail got huge, I found myself having to make some decisions. It was go through folder by folder to discover what was worth keeping or the grand gesture of deleting whole people, whole parts of my life. And as we all know, while I am a details guy, I am very fond of grand gestures.

There were acquaintances who didn't write much or well. There were online flirtations that had fizzled, or never really caught in the first place. Then came the old girlfriends. What to do. The theme lately has been closure. Letting go of old relationships, clearing out my life, rememberances, emails, letters, books, art that reminds me. There is always something there to remind me.

There is a difference in breaking up between letting go & pushing away. Sometimes you just let some people go, the stuff they gave you falls into disrepair, gets lost, disappears. There's the impulse to purge the person completely out of your life. I have a friend Who not only erased all of her email to the boy, but got into his email account [she had his password] and erased it all there, too. A total cleansing. Did she have the right? Doesn't matter, she had the access. The keys to his house, so to speak.

The committed girlfriends were the easiest. "Oh, she's getting married. Yes, better not to leave little flirty things around. Oh her, I still want her, but I have no doubt we'll never get back together. That one, oh, well, if she doesn't get married, she & the new boy will be together a long time. Good for them. No hard feelings. [Click]

Then there are the letters I keep. [Actually, I keep all my letters, I'm referring to the emails that are written like letters.] The ones from girls who were friends first, who I want to remember regardless of whether I have moved on, or if they have. These are the best written ones, the ones I can re-read later in life, whether I'm with someone or not and say to myself, "This is what I was like at that time. This is who I was."

I was talking with Jenn about her writing group -- how there's a woman & a priest who struck up a correspondence. [no, it's not a joke] It so happens that she is now divorced & he is thinking of leaving the priesthood. Their correspondence is intense, but ultimately they decide they have to stop. Or she decides, I'll have to ask Jenn. In any case, in the course of writing group, this woman thinks about publishing their letters, including his half. She's wondering if she's entitled to do that.

Slippery slope that. His words, but he sent them to her. I personally believe that once you speak or write a word, it takes on a life of it's own. You can ask people to respect your privacy, but ultimately the act of writing [or speaking] is an act of creating. People will do the words what they will. Kafka asked his friend & literary executor, Max Brod, to destroy his works after he died. Luckily for us, Max didn't. I can only wonder what Kafka thinks/would think of his legacy.

There's a word in Russian, razbliuto (ros-blee-OO-toe): the feeling a person retains for someone he or she once loved. That's what I think about, the things that remain after love, after lust, or at least after the relationship. Sometimes there are photographs, sometimes letters, and sometimes only memories.

Comments

[M]

LOVE AFTER LOVE

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

-- Derek Walcott

[max]

This is one of the best things you have ever posted. When you put into words something people have never said, but have always felt... it's gold every time.