Lemondrop

As I walked out the door the morning we broke up, I deleted my ex's numbers from my cell phone. A day later, I adjusted my blog so there was no mention of a relationship on my "about" page, and the category devoted to the dog was gone. Last night, I erased my entire text message in-box, just in case there was something from him.

When you split up with someone, you can avoid their street and the entire neighborhood where you lived together -- at least until you feel confident you can run into them without it wrecking your day or your week. But in this age of devices, a person can digitally haunt you long after they're gone.

Imagine taking all evidence of one of the most important people in your life and systematically deleting it. It's wrenching, like you're destroying the good things along with the bad.

Click here to read about what Amber did with old photos of her ex.



It's also strangely freeing. Because the last thing you want as you move on with your life is to casually open up iPhoto to download pictures of a rhubarb pie and be confronted with you and your lost love smiling together under the Tuscan sun.

There's enough heartache I can't dodge, so why subject myself to memories of a time when our future was bright? When it held babies and Italian farmhouses, rather than stilted e-mails about who's in possession of the nice green bath towel.

So one of my first post-breakup orders of business: I must file away the photos. Pull out the birthday parties, the trips to the snow and foreign countries, and transfer them all onto a zip drive. Put the zip drive in a cardboard box and put the cardboard box in the back of a storage unit. He belongs in memory, not on something that's a part of my everyday life.

But I keep putting it off, telling myself it's more important to hunt down a job, spend time with friends in the park, finally set up my living room. And it is. Moving forward is more important than looking back -- even if by looking back, I can put the past away.

If only pain could be erased as easily as a series of photos.