Last night, D was on a run and the kids were asleep, so I decided to tackle my personal gmail account. It had 1546 unread messages. *sigh*
It was an interesting experience going through all of the emails. I was able to unsubscribe from several email lists, which should hopefully result in a more clutter free email experience moving forward. Once I hit the June 2016 mark, I found an unread email from one of my college besties (hi, James!) telling me how happy he is that I’m happy, and how much he misses me. I felt like the biggest asshole for never responding. I immediately sent off a response apologizing for it, but I wanted to apologize here as well. Sorry, dude. You know I love you.
After deleting like 1500 emails, I finally reached the bottom of the inbox. This is a place I rarely visit. It holds some real gems, as well as some reminders of times I’d rather forget but for some reason can’t bring myself to delete.
The gems:
- An email from 2011 written by an old colleague and detailing the hell that is going to muni court. It’s entitled “Gettin’ Outta Jail” and it’s still hilarious.
- Several emails from late 2012 from D which contain attachments to songs he wrote, including a couple he wrote for me. Winter for You still makes me cry.
- A link to a sex video we made. Yeah, baby.
- A few super sweet emails I received from friends during my cancer treatment.
The ugly:
- An email from 5/2012 written by my ex-husband.
- Two emails from 5/2012 written by my ex-MIL.
- A disqus comment thread from 10/30/2012 which contains an argument I had with my boyfriend’s ex regarding content on my blog.
- Emails from 5/2013 between D and myself that I simply refer to as “the great break-up exchange of 2013” and refuse to read because they will make me cry, despite how awesome things ended up. There are some brutal truths in those emails, and I see it as the point where we really took off the gloves and went for it. Balls to the wall.
I should really delete some of this stuff. But I just can’t. I don’t know why. It’s almost like I feel like if I delete it that I’m pretending it didn’t happen. I don’t know…it’s complicated.
I totally get that you can’t delete those bottom of the inbox emails … I have two Rubbermaid tubs of stuff my ex gave me, wrote me, mementos, etc. that I cannot part with. We broke up in 2004 (first real BF and saw me through senior year of HS and freshman year of college). My husband thinks I threw the stuff away … it’s in my mom’s garage!