Prompt: The story behind an object you refuse to throw away.
I am no longer attached to objects or to the idea of holding on for the sake of familiarity.
I spring-clean my life and my surroundings with clockwork regularity. Every birthday, without fail. It’s my personal self-audit. A conscious act of letting go. I release things, habits, and sometimes people who no longer add to my life or support my growth. Not angrily. Not dramatically. Just intentionally. Because holding on to everything isn’t loyalty, it’s clutter.
I refuse to throw away the lessons people and life have taught me.
Not because they were pleasant. Because they were effective.
Do memories prick? Ouch. Yes, they do.
Do feelings hurt? The kind of hurt that laughs in the face of paracetamol and says, nice try.
There was a time when certain memories could knock the wind out of me without warning. Standing in a queue. Folding laundry. Hearing a song I didn’t even like that much. Emotional pain is sneaky like that, zero appointment, full impact.
But something curious happens with time and healing.
One day, the edge dulls.
The poison drains out quietly, without ceremony. No grand closure. No background music. Just a gentle realisation that the memory no longer controls your breathing.
What’s left behind are lessons. Not loud ones. Not smug ones.
Soft, faded, practical life lessons. The kind that makes you wise. Then, if you’re paying attention, wiser.
Life, meanwhile, keeps moving forward. Bills arrive. Tea gets brewed. You laugh at the wrong moments. You survive experiences you once thought would permanently rearrange you.
And then one day, unexpectedly, you’re rifling through a drawer of memories.
And there it is.
An old lesson lying there.
The ink faded. The paper crumbling. Completely redundant.
Not because it wasn’t important, but because you no longer need it. You learned it. Integrated it. Outgrew it.
That’s the real victory no one talks about when discussing healing and personal growth.
Not erasing the past. Not romanticising pain. Just reaching a point where an old hurt feels like an outdated instruction manual for a version of you that no longer exists.
You don’t throw these lessons away.
You keep them, gently, until they release you.
And when they do?
You smile, close the drawer, and move on.
Wiser. Lighter. Still standing.
