It is not hard to find an excuse to put off writing a paper. My excuse this week: spring cleaning. That 15-page paper could wait a few more days; I needed to clean my room. It was productive procrastination but procrastination nevertheless. I even went so far as to try and organize my Ball State e-mail account. Anyone who has tried to undertake this same task will tell you it is a tedious and time-consuming chore. As I started deleting e-mails by the page load, I suddenly stumbled upon something truly horrifying: all of my past relationships. There it was, one sad e-mail at a time, my entire dating history. The high school sweetheart, the rebounds and the New Yorker were all there to remind me of both pleasant and heartbreaking times.
The ghosts of relationships past often come back to haunt us when we're least expecting them. They come in the form of old e-mails, letters and saved voice mails. Although we might forget about them, they were not thrown away or deleted for a reason. Everyone has their own rationale for retaining these remnants. I was forced to examine mine earlier this week after receiving a notice from Ball State informing me that "my mailbox is over its size limit." I guess 800 e-mails in the deleted folder was one too many?
Maybe you can't relate to this; maybe you don't hoard e-mails in the back of your account like I do. Perhaps your remnants take the form of a ticket stub in your wallet or an old shoebox filled with notes from your high school sweetheart (you know who you are). Whatever the case might be, for most of us, these items still retain value even if the person attached to them has faded out of our life. What I've discovered, though, is we don't actually open these e-mails or rummage through our shoeboxes. Instead, we keep them in a place, preferably out of sight, so we can purposely not read their contents and not look at the pictures they hold. What is the point of keeping these remnants then? Do we actually enjoy the "sick to our stomach" sensations that sometimes accompany these ghosts when they inevitably pop-up? No, I don't think that deep down we're all gluttons for punishment.
We keep these relationship souvenirs because despite the fact it just didn't work out, these exes played significant roles in our life, and we can't discredit that. Just because we know we can't (or shouldn't) wear our high school letter jackets anymore doesn't mean we threw them away. Similarly, we know even though we can't (or shouldn't) revisit a former relationship, it's nice to have the memories in a tangible form -- in the back of the closet with our old high school letter jacket.
Despite the automatic computer warnings issued by Ball State University, I haven't disposed of my remnants yet. They represent important lessons in my life I don't want to forget. Someday I will be ready to delete them, but that day is not today.
Write to Courtney at
csferguson@bsu.edu
Read More
Three Air Jam teams take home the win
October 12, 2012Nineteen teams shimmied, shook and flipped for a sold out John R. Emens Auditorium on Thursday night during the 25th annual Air Jam.
Bill Clinton Speaks at North Central High School
October 12, 2012Former President's Speech Could Have Effect on State Senate Race
