Take your records, take your freedom, Take your memories, I don’t need them…. Keith Urban

Packing up my things uncovered a lot of memories. We’ve been taking selfies for ten years. I have entire albums of our selfies, micro-documents of memories that we made. I found our box full of ticket stubs…arena football games, movies, ASU vs. anyone football, hotel matchbooks from anniversaries, Mr. & Mrs. place-cards from weddings we attended and pictures, lots of pictures.

I found emails you sent to me professing your love. Your love letters were digital, but it didn’t stop me from printing them out and keeping them. I reread them. Bad move. I took the mix CD you made me (think Ducky, Pretty in Pink) and played it one last time. Again, another bad move. I kept that CD in my car faithfully from May 2003 when you gave it to me until today. I reread the handwritten cover note one last time. You will never know how many times I listened to those songs and read that cover note. For the seven years you were struggling with the pain of the auto accident to the dependency on prescription pain pills to the stint in rehab to the struggles with your depression to the happy times that you were truly present with me…. Good and bad times, I would pull out that CD and find a familiar song to carry with me throughout the day. Tonight, I added my own note to the cover and tossed it and those old emails into a box of your things. I don’t need them anymore.

I watched Tommy Boy tonight and it took everything in me to not send you a text with quotes from the movie. I will always feel badly for the friends who watched movies with us. The way we would quote lines both actual and ones that we made up. The way we would ask questions knowing that the next line in the movie or in the song was the answer. We loved to laugh at ourselves.

No doubt you will give her a mix CD or a song to think of you, laugh at the same movies we laughed at, take silly photos and recite movie lines, listen to the one hit wonders of the 80’s. She will think you carefree and fun… I will know you recycled my life and gave it to her.

You alone must forever bear the consequences associated with your choices. I, too, will however bear the weight of that decision for the rest of my life. It’s been 25 days since D-Day. Do you think about me? Do you think about what we had? Do you think about what you lost? Or do you think about how good life is for you now with your new job. Do you relish your “role” as right-hand man? Do you think that you’ve gained some freedom? Do you still feel justified in your actions – telling people that we “mutually” grew apart? You should know that I am calling “bullshit” on that one from now until forever. You are the last person I need trying to protect my feelings by saying it was mutual – you didn’t want to say that you had an affair (are having an affair.) Let me be clear again, you wanted nothing to do with reconciling and were dismissive of me because I wanted to save our marriage.

As you pack up your things and move on with your new life, I don’t doubt that you will toss any memory of us into the trash. Why make it just metaphorically? Do it for real, throw it all away, no reason for sentimentality now. You should know that I’m still surprised that for someone who just 25 days ago was convinced he didn’t want anything to do with me or be married to me, that you are dragging your feet on severing the connections you have with me. You still have not signed the bank paperwork to split the account access and Verizon hasn’t separated our accounts yet (grrr) because you haven’t made one call to say that you are taking your own line.

What are you waiting for? Just do it. You are the one that wanted this.