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When I read Giulia Melucci’s post about the leftovers we keep from past relationships, I started thinking about my possessions and mentally sorting through the things I own that were given to me by people I’ve dated or been in a relationship with. It’s not a tremendous amount. In fact, I’ve only been in one relationship that I would consider long-term, and it lasted less than a year. Unsurprisingly, though, I still have a number of things that he gave me during that time.
There’s a bottle of perfume in my bathroom cabinet that I haven’t used since we were together. An iPod player (which I have a picture of because it was included in a 26 Things Photo Scavenger Hunt I did last year). A laptop bag. A water bottle with the logo of his workplace stamped on it.
The water bottle seems like the silliest thing to have kept. It has a specific logo on it, so sometimes people will see it and go, “Hey, where did you get that water bottle from [ex’s workplace]?” I don’t really need that kind of reminder, but I’m not holding onto it for sentimental reasons. I like the shape, and it works well, and I’m too lazy to spend time looking for another one.
If I wanted to get rid of all of that stuff right now, I could. But what about couples who were together for years before they split up? That would be a lot harder. Not to mention if you have a child together, the ultimate remembrance of another person. My older sister has a son from a relationship that ended over ten years ago -- neither she nor my nephew has contact with the father any longer (his choice, not theirs), but I bet she has to think about him a lot more often than I ever do. He was in her life, and he made a contribution to it that’s huge and will never go away. She just can’t get rid of the memory as easily as donating a truckload of possessions to Goodwill.
Giulia wrote her post in the context of food she’s made (in this case, she’d found a container of sauce in her freezer that was originally meant to be made into a dish for someone). But you know what? There doesn’t have to be any physical leftovers of a dish for it to remind you of someone in your past. What if, with one guy, you ate a number of things that you’d never had before you were together? King crab legs. Chicken wings that left a sticky mess all over your hands. What happens the next time you go to eat those things? You might not relate those things to him for the rest of your life, but the memory will last at least a little while.
What happens when you put together a recipe, after not having done so in a while, and realize the last time you made it was when you made dinner for a certain guy? Or when you remember that you just bought a mini muffin pan because you wanted to make someone his favorite brownie bites (that he normally buys in the grocery store), but you never got around to actually doing it because your time together ended before you had a chance?
Instead of food in particular, think about destinations. What about all the places you went with someone, from exotic vacations, to historical landmarks, to something as simple as restaurants in the city where you live? Since I live, work, and date in the Washington, DC area, I would say that I definitely tie restaurants to certain people. An Ethiopian restaurant in Georgetown (which was also the first time I’d had Ethiopian food in my life)? I ate there with R-. A Chinese restaurant on U Street? P- took me there. And J. Paul’s? I shared a raw seafood platter with J-, and we both discovered that we dislike uncooked clams.
There was a time I purposefully took a long look around someone’s apartment because I knew there was a good chance I wouldn’t be back. I can still see that room in my mind. And like a lot of people, there are certain songs I avoid listening to.
That's why I haven't bothered to get
