Dusty Memories

It’s been a crazy weekend so far. I’m trying to get my stuff together for Nationals (and of course the suitcase I bought won’t actually get here until Monday…nothing like packing last minute, eh?) I’m trying to start sorting through my copy edits. I’m trying to rewrite the beginning of Book 2 to fit the way I ended Book 1.

And, I’m trying to clean.

Like really, really. I had a huge shit-fit about it last weekend (before off-roading), because as much of a slob as I am, even I have limits.

And I have reached them.

At any rate, I’m hitting as much of it as I can before I go – there’s a lot of removal going on. Piles of clothes and toys and books for donation…just stuff, I guess. Mr myn and I are both packrats to a pretty large extreme, but as I told him last week – if we want to organize the stuff we want to keep, we gotta get rid of the crap we don’t. And no offense, but if it’s been sitting in a box in the garage for the last four years? We don’t need it.

I went through part of the office last night – I can actually see my desk now, whee! I found books and papers I’d lost track of, CDs, and an adult video or two. *ahem* Clearly I remember buying them, but guess I didn’t actually care for the titles all that much since they were laden with dust. Probably been wedged on my book shelf for nearly two years now.  I found some pretty lousy hentai too, that I *do* remember watching and hating, so those are going out the door for sure.

Aaannnyway. One of the bins had some stuff in it I hadn’t seen for a while – computer stuff, old papers…and love letters. Long ones. Like 8 pages of hand-written-glory-on-both-sides-of-the-paper kind of letters. They’re faded and a bit hard to read. (Not to mention, my erstwhile paramour’s handwriting was a bit crazy anyway.) There are at least five of them.

They are not from mr myn.  He wonders why I keep them.

I’m not sure I have an answer for that. It was from way beyond his time. I was in college and in another country. The other guy and I were both seeing other people at the time, (although, oddly enough neither of us said anything to the other until right before we left.) And to be honest….nothing happened between us at all. Everything was done with the occasional glance, a soft smile, a bit of quiet conversation and once, a gentle squeeze of the hand.

So why such blistering chemistry? We knew each other for maybe two weeks…and after I left, the letters poured in.The first one in particular was horribly rambling and endearing and awkward as he struggled with what was going on with his emotions. (He was engaged, of course…and living with his fiancée. I, on the other hand, was already on the rocks with my current boyfriend. I broke up with him almost immediately upon coming back to the US. Not because of what happened, per se, but simply because it had showed me a lot of what I had been missing.)

Of course, I fell wretchedly in love with my Irish lad’s words. I am a sucker for language, I think. Although his accent probably didn’t hurt either, since I’m a sucker for them too.

In the end, though, the tone of the letters changed and became more cautious until he finally confessed that he’d done me wrong and that he didn’t actually love me after all.

And I was devastated.

But there it was.

So why do I keep the letters? I don’t know. Maybe I’m truly a romantic at heart, and even though the letters weren’t enough, there’s still something about knowing you were once worth 8 pages of hand-written emotion  –  to remember how your heart beat like mad in the darkness of your dorm room as you read and reread and reread until you’d memorized the curve of every last phrase.

Given today’s bent on technology, physical memories are a rare thing. I keep them because they’re worth having, even if I have to sort through the dust to find them.