Why love letters have to die with the relationship from which they sprung

I'm a bit wordy -- forgive my title.

I used to be one of those people. The people who would keep mementos and letters and cards thrown chaotically into a box for future reference. The Pandora's Box of love letters and memories past.

It got to a point where I just couldn't do it anymore. 

It's not only hard to look back at bits and pieces of the good times -- relationships past, friendships from long ago -- it's misleading. To pick up old romance spewed from the pens of past loves and yearn for something that couldn't be and possibly never was. To see reality through the rose-coloured lens of loneliness (which, lets face it... is usually when these boxes of notes get dusted off). It's not a good thing. It doesn't help make things better.

It skews how we see our own current reality. We try to measure up what we have or what we don't have with what we thought we had a long time ago. We blissfully ignore the ugly yelling matches and the differences that separated us. We miss people who we have let go for a reason. We try telling ourselves that we miss the friendship we had with someone who, quite honestly, probably wasn't friendship material in the first place.

It's healthy to purge sometimes. It's good for our sanity. It helps us truly move on. 

Let's face it. It's hard to be truly happy with yourself or truly happy with someone else until you really let old flames flicker and fade out.

This post is dedicated to a friend who stumbled upon one of her own hidden-away letters.