I dragged the dreaded Life Suitcase out from under the stairs the other day, only to discover it was easier to let go of the past than I thought.
Most of us have a Life Suitcase or a Life Box or, if you are really organised and economical with your memories, a Life Shoebox. A hidden container stuffed with notes and cards and letters and photographs and mementos from your past. When a friend, whose wife is expecting a baby soon, told me he had recently thrown out "a lot of my life" while clearing out the room where the baby will live, I was quietly horrified that he might have got rid of some important stuff. Still, inspired by him, I decided to try and do a spot of life decluttering myself.
The easiest part turned out to be the throwing out of photographs from my wedding day. I spent ages appraising myself in my wine-coloured velvet Laura Ashley dress, big hair-do, smiling through the speeches and showing off my cheap wedding band. The girl with the big smile and the bad make-up, the boy with the worried expression and the terrible tie; they both seem like strangers to me now. I made three piles of pictures. The biggest pile was of the ones I wanted to throw away. With no official photographer - it was a budget event - there were an awful lot of shots in the suitcase that weren't exactly flattering, and with a divorce under my belt and a new relationship that has lasted longer than my marriage, I knew I just didn't need that many reminders of the day.
The smallest pile held the pictures I wanted to keep. It was an important event in my life at the time, after all, and I had no desire to erase it out of my history completely. The middle pile was a bunch of photos I am going to send to my ex-husband so that he can decide whether he needs these memories in his life. Or whether he can live quite happily without them taking space up in his own Life Box.
It was harder to part with the letters and my diaries accumulated between the ages of 16 and 21, so for the most part I didn't. I figured that they are a record of my personal and social history and I'd regret throwing out information about times in my life that, without the clues provided in my incoherent angst-ridden ramblings, I can no longer remember.
In one unsent letter to a penpal, I talk about meeting Morrissey in the Shelbourne Hotel: "He was covered in flowers thrown at him by girls outside the hotel . . . later I was lucky enough to talk to him, and I discovered that he really is as loopy and aloof as they say." There are bunches of letters and cards in the suitcase, sent to me by girlfriends and boyfriends, speaking of another time and place. It was a time when the way a boy looked at you in the street could be analysed for seven hours; a time when every argument seemed to last a lifetime.
The letters speak so much about what a crazy mixed-up kid I was back then. My love life in letters is particularly cringeworthy. It appears no boy who paid even a passing interest in me was safe: "Dear Ian, well, here begins my first letter to you and you haven't even been gone a day. I'm debating whether to make this letter one in which I tell you what I feel or one in which I just tell you things like 'I went to the shop and bought a packet of crisps' . . . I miss you and keep thinking about you and wondering what you are doing." Bear in mind I'd only known this guy, Ian from Wales, for three days.
In another letter I never sent, I tell a friend: "I have met this boy but he is only 15 and I like him but I hate myself for liking him and he likes me but he hates himself for liking me and he hates me for liking him." The eloquence of my pain was truly earth-shattering.
At the end of the decluttering exercise, My Life Suitcase weighed almost as much as it did before I started. Still, after trawling through the memories, good, bad and embarrassing, I felt lighter in myself. My boyfriend and I went off to a birthday party that night and in the taxi we remembered it was the fifth anniversary of the day we met.
Five years ago, we both began another journey and for some reason started to add less and less to our Life Suitcases. We've collected a few cards along the way, maybe a couple of concert ticket stubs, but there are no wedding photos in there, and we don't know if there ever will be. I don't think it really matters. There comes a point when you stop collecting, stop commemorating, stop validating and start living. It was something of a relief when I realised that's exactly what has happened over the past five years. At last.
