Friday, April 13, 2007

Erasure

Over the weekend, M. sent a cryptic e-mail stating he was withdrawing his offer of a flight to Vancouver. I haven't talked to him since, except to email a reply of "yeah, no worries". I have no idea what the "change in circumstances" consists of, though I can make an educated guess.

I am certain M has a girlfriend.

Now, I do not, and have never had any right to get upset over this. To be honest, I'm not all that upset, though I AM disappointed that I won't get a free flight to visit my sister. Mostly, I feel resigned. It was inevitable, and I have known that for ages.

I went down to the post office on Tuesday, bought a little bubble-pack envelope, and mailed him his housekey back. No note - there's nothing much else to say.

I took the wicked photo of the two of us down from 'the gallery' on my wall. I don't want to look at him anymore.

I removed him from my hotmail 'favorites' list. I don't want to have his name hanging around in plain sight.

I am considering changing my phone number. I have already erased his from my address book.

If he is not going to be in my life, then he needs to be all the way out of it. I want it to look as though he never existed. As though 'we' never existed. I do not want to see photos of us kissing. I do not want to be reminded of him at all. I do not want to see him or hear from him or really to even have to think about him anymore.

This is beyond closure...this is erasure.

7 comments:

SWF42 said...

Isn't it funny, the steps we take to make someone less visible to our own eyes?

For me, the last step is sometimes the hardest - removing them from my Yahoo Messenger list. I can't tell you how many times I've held my mouse posied over that delete button for a long - loonnnnnggg - time before sending them to byte-heaven.

(I still have way too many of them in my cell phone. I tell myself that's because I want to be forewarned if they call me again, so I can hit 'reject' on the call.)

Esmerelda said...

I have no problem deleting them from yahoo. But I keep some on hte cell just for the same reason SWF said.

How do you ever get them out of your HEAD, though?

jess said...

You don't. But you can get rid of that yearning feeling over time, and by not thinking fondly of them. I have made a vow to myself to never again tell anyone how wonderful M was. I mean, yeah, he's a great guy, but I don't want to think about him like that anymore. I don't want to think about him at all, for awhile.

In a couple of years, I will be able to look back at the photos and smile without feeling like I want to be with him, but not right now.

mist1 said...

I keep them in the cell phone for a bit with a special ring, so that I know not to answer. After about a month, I delete them. The first 30 days are when they are mostly likely to call.

Eileen Dover said...

I keep them in my phone, too, just for that satisfactory moment to not answer the phone...

But, powerful words.

Wow. Erasure. Wow.

I never thought of it like that before. So true.

Have the T-shirt said...

Erasure is sometimes what it takes, huh?

The problem is you can erase them from your LIFE, but it is impossible to erase them from your MIND.

Memories do fade though, and that part just takes more time.

jess said...

Yeah, I know about the time thing. I have also discovered that the clock doesn't even stop ticking until you decide, for real, that it's over.