She found a list of the fun stuff they did. Thought about destroying it, but figured that she might want it later. After all, there will be times when she will need to remember the good things. Though at the moment there are usually times when she thinks about what went wrong, mainly so she can justify moving forward with her life. She debates with herself, is it possible to forget something (maybe someone) on purpose?
At her old flat she remembered to pick up her shoes, but the poster she bought from lux sits rolled up in the hallway.
“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” -Helen Keller
Hi, I'm Pippa, an Australian living in Berlin, Germany.
I'm passionate about learning, particularly lifelong and self-organised learning styles. I currently work as an educator and developer of learning related technologies.
I make things such as clothes and at least one small boat and cook, eat and read. I like stories. I also like maps, hot cups of tea with milk, Arnott's Western Australian gingernut biscuits, well written songs and plants.
When they separated, she burnt or threw out most of their common stuff. She burnt all of the wedding photos that she could find, then went around her mother’s home and destroyed anything there that reminded her of him. She retrieved her wedding dress from the closet at her mother’s home, where it was stored alongside her sister’s wedding dress and her mother’s wedding dress, and dropped it off one night in a Salvation Army clothing bin.
Years later, she finds herself thinking about what went wrong, even though she believes she has started to move forward.
She dreads any chance encounter with him and his new family, because she knows that will plunge her into several days of self-flagellating reflection and paralysing analysis. She tries not to remember the “good times”, such as there were.
She has not been able to forget him, no matter how purposeful she has been, and irrespective of how many guys there have been since him.
*sniff*
Carla
This is probably an insensitive comment as it is completely off-topic, but what the hell … I just wanted to point out to any interested Adelaidians and Melbournites that I have a couple of gigs coming up in both cities. See here for details. Hope this isnt one of those deals where html dont work, if so apologies. and hugs. will be weird doing a gig in Radelaide without you Pip. apparently Brillig (whose gig it is) are doing requested covers, so to fit in with the theme I may* attempt reckoning tunes if people give me advanced notice by email or blog comment in order to rehearse them up.
*’may’ as in ‘might if at all feasible’.
She shredded or burnt, many, many photos of him, but stopped short of some that featured their children. She still has the “love letters” he wrote to her, all those years ago. They are proof that, once upon a time, he did love her and had dreams of a future together. Once, she made a collage of photocopies of the letters, and she kept that on top of her wardrobe for a long time. When she moved house 10 years later, she burnt that too. He’s a ghost now, but every now and then, he creeps into her consciousness, and still has the power to stop her dead in her tracks if she hears a song on a supermarket radio, from those years. That is part of the reason why she does not listen to those stations, and would rather hear what the musicians of today are playing.