To My Former Friends + Ex-Somethings: I Let Your Stuff Go So I Could Move On

(SPOT.ph) To say I am a sentimental person would be an understatement.

We’re talking notebooks-from-third-grade, faded-receipts-from-2017, flattened-candy-wrappers type of sentimental. One could call me an anik-anik girlie, but that’s a conversation for a different story.

I keep literally everything. And if you knew me in 2021—the height of a global pandemic that shuttered everyone indoors to contend with their heavy thoughts against their will—you would know I threw a good two decades of my life away. Why?

Because a friend I used to message at 2 a.m. started to sound like a stranger and lives in the past tense now. Because a boy I thought would be forever didn’t see me in his future anymore. Because I've deleted the contact info, yet four years later, I can still recite the number by heart. Everyone had their time to think, and I just wasn't in the picture anymore. If I wasn't in their lives, why should they be in mine? And so, why should all the stuff associated with them still be in my spaces?

Also read: Is Your Space a Mess? Try These Decluttering Challenges to Get Your Life in Order

Inevitable change

The way I see it, pivotal changes in your life hit in two ways: hard and fast, or slow and merciless. It’s excruciating, really, when you begin to lose people in real-time and can’t seem to do anything about it. My hands are tied, and all I can do is accept the truth. Lesson learned: Break-ups are bad, but friend break-ups are worse.

Over pause-heavy calls and draining messages, I saw important people in my life slip away. Perhaps the patterns were too subtle to point out and confront, but they were apparent enough to unveil the truth.

The slow part was the complete lack of a reply, or overthinking a message. The fast part was tearing up seeing all the remnants from relationships both romantic and platonic, both clear as day and ambiguous as hell, and realizing you think of it in past tense, and a future tense seems unlikely, or impossible even. They hurt all the same. Nothing ached more than knowing that I couldn’t do things differently, and that as a human on borrowed time, I am simply subject to its whims. And if that meant things don’t work out, I’d simply have to pick up the broken pieces in the wake of destruction.

I refused to tell any of my friends. I got myself into this mess, and I can get out of it myself.

Also read: Is It Okay to Break Up via Chat or Text? What to Do if You Get One?

Hastened healing

Revenge improvement was my drug. I maintained a consistent sleep and workout schedule. Not once did I miss a night of my skincare routine. Healthier foods were going into my system. I even got promoted. Biologically and physically, no one could tell me I was doing anything wrong. But my body knew I was fooling myself, and I found myself in clinics all the same. Turns out I actually really needed to heal mentally, and no amount of rawdogging physical self-improvement could trick my brain into thinking everything was fine. Nothing was fine.

Also read: Remembering All Too Well: Why Loving Is Short and Forgetting So Long

Everything was stuff

Every single day, waking up was a reminder of the people no longer in my life. Strewn across my walls were sketches on sticky notes shared while waiting for meetings, stuck in between instant photos of people I greet on their birthday annually and will never talk to again. Tiny knickknacks bought as matching souvenirs with a former friend I haven’t spoken to in three years litter my desk. An ex-friend’s handmade sticker was still wedged in between bills in my wallet. And perhaps the worst: a section of my closet too high up for me to reach that I knew he was tall enough to see eye to eye.

Everything about my room was people, people, people no longer here. Even my social media feeds showed their latest posts despite the lack of replies in chat. It reached a point where I was so sick of crying that it physically hurt. I couldn’t up and leave because of lockdowns, so I did the craziest thing I could do at that time to change my environment: “Hey mom, why don’t we repaint the rooms?”

It probably looked like I had three heads sprouting from my neck. Still, she said sure, because the old house needed it anyway. But apprehension shone through her eyes, because how the hell could we paint my room if I was knee-deep in sentimental clutter I refused to throw out? It was embarrassing, but looking back at it now, I had a problem, and I was doing the best I can to help myself.

Day by day, the start date for the project got closer and either I got my act together and let the paint land, or I never move on from this at all. I passed the point of no return: I told a friend and promised to send her progress photos. Well, that was it. The only way out was through. I put on Marie Kondo and hoped for the best, but really, 95% of the work was still up to me.

It’s incredibly dramatic, but I thought I was going to pass out, perhaps even pass away. Having to let go of so many things made me hate myself, but it also triggered an anger I haven’t felt in quite a while. Why the hell was I being forced to let go of the last few things that reminded me of better days? Why don’t I just keep them, just in case I recover the friendships and relationships I lost? And then suddenly; Why the hell do I have all of this stuff anyway?

Then it dawned on me. Yes, I was angry about being left behind and cutting things off with people who couldn’t treat me better. But really, I was mourning my past self, the one who was utterly elated and happy with people I thought would be in my life forever. For once, I looked at myself in the mirror and thought I didn’t want to be sad over people crying over other people now.

Brutal was the only way I could describe it. After rereading letters and weeping into lent clothes after sighing over cute keyrings, I heard the record scratch and said “What the hell is wrong with you! This is so not hot of you!” to myself. Suddenly I was letting go of most of the stuff. These were no longer from friends, they were from strangers. The shirt I wore on the first date was cute, but from that day on, it would only be a cute shirt, and no longer a shirt I wore on the first date.

Everything else I kept had a purpose; to be worn, to be used, to be shared. Sure, they were sore spots for me, but they had renewed meaning, and if kept, they were all mine.

On the first day, I let one thing go. The next, I did five. In a week, I could say goodbye without that dull ache in my chest threatening to break me down from within. At first I focused on people, then I was going chronologically and bidding goodbye to stuff from 10, 20 years ago. Out of sight, out of mind, and then I did the same for social media. I forgot how light it felt to wake up without dread.

Also read: The Art of Letting Go: How to Start Decluttering and Never Look Back

Mourning myself

Turns out all of this was grief. I am sorry for all the things I did, but I was more sorry for all the things I couldn’t. It was cliché, but it still rang true: grief is love persevering. But I couldn’t let that grief rule me forever.

The boxes piled up, and so did the trash bags. My stuff ended up in homes that would love them with each use, instead of crammed in corners out of shame and guilt. My things were gaining a new life, and I had hoped I would, too.

I found it both terrifying and freeing to know that we are not our stuff, that things that once meant the world to us may someday be relinquished from that duty, and we can move on to greater, grander things.

For all the things I kept in good faith, they stick by me today, and now my heart barely aches. While I don't think I could ever hate or be mad at former friends and ex-somethings, I do take pride in being able to love so deeply and honestly anyway.

Three cheers for love

All in all, I developed a better relationship with my stuff moving forward. I can be a bit more objective now, and I can let go if it's holding me back. I just wish this growth didn't have to take all that emotional turbulence, but no good story ever came out of easy times.

I did keep one thing: a letter. The first one I ever got and cried to. Not to toot my own horn, but I write for a living, so stuff like that doesn’t cut as deep. But that one did, and so I kept it. Initially for them—the last tangible remnant of their love for me, of happier times I thought would never end, and words I encountered every day yet strung together so strongly that it elicited tears from an otherwise stone-cold me. But now I keep it for me; proof that I am capable of so much love and emotion, the same love and emotion I never thought I could ever feel in this lifetime. Eternal proof that I have loved and lost, and chose to persist anyway. The love I had given was returned to me. I sound absolutely insane, but to love unconditionally is probably the most beautiful thing I can do in this lifetime.

And if all my former friends and ex-somethings are reading this thinking it was their letter I kept and care enough to wonder, I fear you’ll have to engage in a trial by combat to emerge as the Scott Pilgrim victor of this narrative. Good luck. I loved you.