An Ex-Box is a box of memorabilia from a past relationship. You know, when someone dumps your ass and you’re feeling super sad about it, you can pack up all those pictures of the two of you at Disney World and the trinkets he/she gave you and the lock of his/her hair you cut like a crazy stalker while they were sleeping. Letters and notes and poems and jewelry and cards and key chains and maps of all the places you were going to travel too. Your cat’s ashes.
These boxes are important because you aren’t ready to throw all that stuff away yet and you shouldn’t be expected to. But you need to get it the hell out of your sight. So you take everything you can find and get it into one box (and hopefully everything can fit into one box) and you lug it down to your storage locker where you tell yourself you can leave it for the next six months, until you’re ready to ditch it.
The funny thing about time is that it isn’t the arbitrary experience that we think it will be. Yes time does help the healing process, but six months isn’t very long and sometimes that ex-box is like the heart under the floorboard in The Tell-Tale Heart; ticking and beating and reminding you of its presence.
If you’re lucky, you won’t have to see much of your ex. If you’re lucky, you won’t have to run into her with her new boyfriend or fuck buddy or husband or wife. If you’re lucky you won’t have a pile of mutual friends and she won’t have left you for a dude who’s got a hotter body than you or someone who used to bully you in high school. If you’re lucky, the only thing left that will remind you of how broken you really are is this stupid ex-box. And if you’re luckier, there won’t be much to put in the box to remind you of that old life that was filled with possibility.
I have an ex-box. It’s not even from my last ex, it’s from the one before that. He’s married with a kid. He got married six months after we broke up. He used to send me pieces of fiction, short stories he wrote and postcards with little ink drawings of animals on them. He made me mixed CDs with bands like The Smiths and Beck. He once told me I was everything to him. I don’t need that box anymore, but I just can’t seem to bring myself to get rid of it. I guess the ex-box carries the power of the past and no matter how good the present is, there are always pieces of us that remain unresolved.
1. I thought we were going to play Xbox, Billy said. No, you idiot, James said. I asked you over here to help me with my Ex-box. I need to lug it down to the storage locker.
2. My ex-box has my ex-girlfriend’s fingernails in it. I just can’t seem to throw them away.
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