The Weight of Keeping

There was once a person who had a collection,

not of things,

but of goodbyes.

Movie tickets from an old friend who moved away. A dried flower from somebody who had given it to them long ago. A photograph with a person whose name they hadn’t uttered in years. A receipt from the café where two people had promised to come back again, even though neither of them did.

Their room became a museum of the people who had once been in their life but were no longer there.

Whenever someone had left, they would keep something of theirs, so the parting would not feel as though it truly was. Something to hold on to, so the space between them would not feel as vast. As long as they had something to remember them by, perhaps it would signify that person had not, in fact, completely vanished from existence.

Years upon years went by, until one evening, sifting through an old box, they uncovered a note from someone they had once loved dearly. They knew the handwriting, yet what the note said, they did not. They recalled the person, the conversations, the laughs, the tears, the love; but they did not recall missing them, or even missing what they had been together.

For the first time since they had started collecting goodbyes, the person questioned whether it was worth it to keep remembering people who had once been so important in their life.

They took out the boxes, one by one.

Some things in them were too precious to throw away, or too selfish to part with, since, if they did, then it would truly signify an end to them, and an end to the possibility of them returning.

And here was the realization that had evaded them since they had begun this endless cycle of goodbyes: that to let go was not to betray,

but to realise that something, or someone, could have been, but no longer was.

They put the boxes down, and slowly, the person began to put everything away. There was no dramatic moment, only a sudden and unfamiliar emptiness in what had, until now, been a heavily cluttered room. Instead of jumping into this new and strange void, however, they did not fill it up with things, or people, or memories.

Because sometimes, to preserve something is not to carry it with you everywhere you go,

but to let it go,

and move on.