thanks for showing me your swiss army knife

What to do with the boxes, my friend wonders, the old photos and graduation tassels and ticket stubs, the stuffed animals from my high school boyfriend. So many things to keep.

A couple of years ago my mother dropped off a humidor of old letters to me, I say. I glanced at a few, shuddered to remember how lonely I was as a teenager, and recycled the rest unread so I wouldn’t have to think about that anymore. Dan tried to dissuade me but I have no regrets. If the love letters could have sorted themselves out, I might have saved them, but smiling about the gushiness of my gay boyfriend from ’91 wasn’t worth going through the rest.

She considers. I don’t think I have any love letters, just the teddy bears and hand-me-down bongs.

I’m shocked, and surprised that I’m shocked. She dated athletes, nice boys all, but perhaps less likely than the tortured artists I coveted to write her poetry. Plus I had summer-camp boyfriends back when long distance calls were expensive, and I started using e-mail obsessively as soon as college began; we were writing to each other anyway so paeans of joy were no great stretch. Even the perpetually stoned potter left haikus about my feet on my whiteboard freshman year. (The limericks, well, they don’t count.)

But I hadn’t known that I considered such words to be a standard part of even a fleeting relationship. I don’t remember anyone before Dan giving me tangible gifts. My friend has a collection of jewelry and toys from birthdays and Christmases; she’d have been hurt if a boyfriend had failed to provide her with such. I got sonnets, and just now realized how much I took them for granted. To all my exes out there: thank you for skipping the heart-shaped magnets.

Committing suicide after a failed marriage is courageous?

I haven't read this book; the review alone are pissing me off. There's nothing new about romanticizing dramatic love affairs that end badly. I hate that so few people seem to see how passion can coexist with stability, that happily living with someone day in and day out is in fact love, and that chasing excitement may be a fine option for some but opting out of that doesn't mean settling.

I agree that just because an affair doesn't last forever doesn't mean it wasn't important or worthwhile. But I don't think being subsumed by someone who treats you badly shows self-confidence, either, as Nehring seems to suggest.

this isn't love, it's narcissism

If Dan were dying and decided that he was going to devote all his energy to making a statue of himself for me to remember him by when he was gone, instead of spending time with me, I'd leave him too.