"That's a pretty cool chair."
"Thanks."
"So, where did you get it?"
There it was, the six words that I didn't want to hear coming out of my boyfriend's mouth. I could lie and tell him I picked it up at a yard sale and he would never question it. Yet I knew I had to be a big girl so I opened my mouth and confessed that it belonged to an ex-boyfriend. Suddenly it was out there in the world and something my new boyfriend had to contend with on a daily basis. That innocuous looking chair that previously meant nothing except for a place to sit now had a darker and heavier feel to it.
I admit that I'm one of those girls that holds onto things from past relationships. If you see me running errands in town, there's a good chance that the oversized hooded sweatshirt I'm wearing belonged to an ex. My friends even laugh because I have several sweatshirts that belonged to my exes scattered around my apartment. It's not that I'm holding onto those men in any way, shape or form but rather that I like the shirts themselves.
The chair though, that is something different entirely. That chair was my ex-boyfriend's favorite thing in the world and when I moved into an unfurnished place, he grudgingly passed it to me. When he skipped town after breaking my heart, I had thoughts of tossing it in the dumpster, painting it hot pink or even attacking it with a sledgehammer. Instead I tried moving it to different areas of the house, but by then it was part of my living room. The ex and I later became friends and even though years have passed, he still occasionally asks about that chair. Even he knows that the chair is part of my home now and not something I can just toss aside.
I don't keep things from past relationships out of spite or because I want to hold onto that relationship, but because I like them. Those things have become part of my life, something I want to keep in my life regardless of what it might mean. If that boyfriend had ever once asked me to give up the chair, I would have in a heartbeat, but he didn't ask and that made me love him even more. When we weather through a relationship, we carry those battle scars with a sense of pride and honor. The memories associated with those things that once belonged to our ex is yet another badge of honor. After everything the relationship once meant, why shouldn't we allow ourselves to hold onto something static?