Today I collected my laptop to let Sam borrow while he is away on a trip over the weekend. I decided it was a good time to sort through the gazillion emails I had collected over time. No – I had no emails to hide or hurriedly delete, delete, delete. There were emails from 2004, for goodness sake.
In my email program, I had a folder I titled “keep.” It was filled with memorable emails, good or bad. As I sorted them all out and came to the emails I had saved from 2007, my heart broke in two. All of those sad, confusing, heart-wrenching emails between me and Sam during that year – I started crying after only three emails.
As sad as they are, as painful as they are, I cannot part with them. They serve as my witness to everything that happened that year. They serve as my guide for deciphering our current relationship. They show me my emotional weaknesses and a few barely existent strengths. They show me shadow things about me, about us, that I would not have recognized at the time they were written.
These emails – overwhelming to me – are diverse. There are emails from Sam confessing his love eternal; there are emails from me begging for understanding and clarity from him; there are emails – long emails – where I am trying to say goodbye. And, they are all infinitely sad for me. Sad things.
So, rather than delete them, I created a new folder: “sad things.” I moved those particular emails into that particular folder. Sad memories and sad words for “sad things.”
Sam will be here in a few minutes to pick up the laptop. Perhaps he will be curious, as we are often wont to be, and scroll through my emails. Maybe he will see the “sad things” folder and wonder, perhaps double click to open, and find himself immersed in our past. Maybe he will read them all; perhaps he will cry.
I want him to read them. I want him to know I’ve saved them. Even though they are all representative of a time when my heart was constantly breaking, they are our history. They are the proof that we were there, that somehow, with the grace of God and true unconditional love, hearts can survive. Relationships can survive. Love can survive. We can survive. We can survive such sad things.
