Love's Letters Lost

Although I never lived up in Portland, my Dad's house there still is home to a great deal of my memorabilia -- high school and college yearbooks, childhood books, programs from plays I was in over the years. Also, in a drawer, are two shoeboxes, each filled with mementos of a romantic relationship. One of these boxes contains what are, to this day, the most romantic love letters I have ever received. It was very important for me to keep them, but also important for me to have them out of my apartment. I read an interesting article today called Zapping Old Flames Into Digital Ash -- now that most correspondence is done digitally, people end up with emails, digital photos, and voicemails that chronicle any given relationship. Especially in an online dating scenario, saved emails can be as significant as those letters I keep in a shoebox (which were pre-internet, by the way). The article describes how purging the digital record of a relationship can be theraputic. Personally, I haven't really gone as far as to purge all emails and photos of someone, but I have cleaned out a slew of email messages from a few dating scenarios over the years. None of these have been particularly significant relationships, however. I would imagine that, in a situation where I was seriously invested emotionally with someone and it didn't work out, that I'd like to do something similar to a digital shoebox -- maybe burn everything onto a CD and file it away somewhere. I even printed out a bunch of emails from a particularly traumatic breakup a while back and put them into the appropriate shoebox. But regardless of my method of saving -- I'd never erase them permanently. Each relationship is part of who I am, and zapping it into cyber-oblivion is not the answer for me.

What about you? Do you keep digital or non-digital records of your past relationships? Inquiring minds want to know . . .

Comments

[erika]

Hee, I saved a handful of emails from when the ex and I broke up. They are there to remind me what the relationship became and how loco he became after the breakup. I also sometimes save emails from my friend J, telling me why she stopped seeing some boy. This way, if she ever considers hooking up with said boy again, I can remind her why they aren't together in the first place.

[Rob]

ah...I'm not sure if I could handle modern dating. I'm like you, I know that there a couple of shoeboxes full of romantic letters in an old closet at my mother's house, but given my wife and two kids, these letters from a pre internet age are not things I want to have around. She (my mother) inquires occasionaly whether I "know" that these boxes exist and half heartly hopes that I will clear her shelves but I don't have the heart to dispose of the innocence - maybe I secretly long to return to those days when a love letter took a few days to arrive. Too bad we can't go back.

[Laren]

Erika --
I have saved emails from friends that served the same purpose -- reminding me why I shouldn't be with someone.

Rob --
I'm with you -- although I'm a huge fan of email, there's something very personal about a long, handwritten letter. I miss those days too.

[cynthia]

i've saved some of the really really good ones onto a cd. i had saved some of the evil ones too, but after awhile i decided i didn't want that evil on my computer so erased them.

[redsock]

Once upon a time I was madly in love with this woman and although it didn't work out (for a variety of reasons) I would write her letters and it was as if the words were pouring out from my chest right onto the page -- I know it sounds corny but... -- I think about her often and I can still feel her snuggled against me on the couch, eating ice cream in the dark - those were some of the sweetest moments I've ever known. I hope she's happy and thinks of me once in a while when she eats ice cream.

[Laren]

She does.