The Red Box

The Curated coat (similar)
Sezane top
Zara jeans (similar)
Jonak babies (similar)
Sezane bag
Celine sunglasses
Linjer ring (c/o) (similar)
Location: Osborne Village – Winnipeg, Manitoba

Two days into the new year, I threw away a red, heart-shaped box that I’ve had since I was fourteen. This box, full of old correspondence and mementos of a single relationship, had been with me for twenty-three years. I packed it up every time I moved, from Winnipeg to Vancouver to Paris to Vancouver to Paris and finally, back to Winnipeg again. But otherwise, I almost never looked at it. In fact, I avoided looking at it, or opening it, if I could, because I wasn’t ready to deal with its contents and their ramifications on my life.

In the years since we made that last move back to Winnipeg, I’ve made reference to needing to face the past that I left behind here… probably more times than I want to count. But I’ve only once spoken directly about the part of my life that involved the red box, in the summer of 2018. It was when that silly movie about a girl who writes letters to her crushes was number one on Netflix and the whole English speaking world spent a week in love with Peter Kavinsky. The whole world… except me.

The truth is, I’ve never talked about this in detail because even though it happened so long ago, I’ve never been able to find the right words. And it’s been hard to bring myself to try. For a long time, just opening that red box was excruciating. The thought of examining what was inside in detail, acknowledging it in words, was more than I could bear.

“Any respon-
sible writer will tell you that there is
nothing to be gained by

covering up the filfth in history or
for that matter

in our-

selves.”
– Ann Pedone

Am I a responsible writer? I’m not sure, sometimes. But I think Ann is right. We can shut hard things out, close the door on them, lock them away inside of ourselves, cover up the filth of our own history, hoping it will stay quiet. Many of us do, I know I’m not alone in it. But it’s no use. The things we put away don’t actually go anywhere. They stay on the other side of that door, or wherever we’ve locked them, waiting. Sometimes knocking, softly, but audibly, so we know they’re still there. Nothing goes away just because it’s ignored. My red box certainly didn’t. I was always aware of its continued presence, and, on some level of the fact that I would need to address what was inside before I could move on.

The only way out of anything is through – but going through is uncomfortable and ugly and sometimes absolutely devastating. Sometimes all of it at once, and more, too. I speak from experience. I’m through, now. And I knew it because I was ready to throw the red box away.

It was strange, to put it in the garbage, especially after living with it for so long. I piled other things in on top of it, in the course of my normal day – an empty chickpea tin, broccoli stems, kleenexes. The next morning, Ian gathered up the full garbage bag and took it all out on his way to work. But I’d felt the sense of liberation, the momentary rush of lightness, as soon as I put it in the can and closed the lid. The red box wasn’t just a box, it was a metaphorical weight that I’d been dragging around with me for years – and throwing it away was letting it go.

I should have done it a long time ago. I wish that I’d been able to, that I could have allowed myself to do that… that I could have extended myself the same kind of forgiveness for my contributions to what I kept in it that I’m always so willing to give to other people for worse offences, but better late than never, anyway.

And now that I’m on the other side, still standing, in a place that I can admit I often wondered if I could ever get to, it’s time for me to tell this story. Not because anyone really needs to hear it, but because carrying it alone for all this time, which I initially did to protect myself, ultimately wound up hurting me. Telling it is part of the healing. When I finally did start talking about it, reluctantly and within the walls of my therapist’s office, I realised that. Words are my way through – which shouldn’t really come as a surprise, I suppose.

It’s all history now. It’s been more than two decades since that red box was gifted to me, after all. But history needs to be written. I’m going to write it for myself, the fourteen-year-old version of her who first packed up that box and put it in the back of her closet. And the nineteen-year-old version of her who couldn’t believe that she was still adding to it, and that it could still hurt so much every single time. Those girls need to know that their story was real; that it wasn’t the only one like it.

Maybe, somewhere, there are other girls who need to know that, too. They deserve someone brave enough to tell a version of their story for them. So consider this the last oblique reference to the story I’ve never been able to tell. The red box, and everything in it, was always garbage. It’s where it belongs now, and soon, I’m going to tell you exactly why.

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