I'm not inspired this week. My heart is broken. The boss keeps going off about ministers and information bills and stuff like that but it's all too much for me right now. He says I'm good for nothing with a long face. Now I'm sitting here trying to look as if I'm working, but I'm not. I'm reading through all her emails, trying to work out why she said she loved me, why she acted as if she loved me, when she's just pushed off, doesn't even answer when I call and has been seen swanning around the town with some gent in a BMW. I thought we were together, really together you know, like superglue. But it seems I was wrong.
I'm not amused when the boss starts laughing, shaking his head, 'I just don't believe this' he says, 'this is tailor-made for you'. I really don't want to know. Anyway, when I get up to make the coffee he messes with my computer. When I sit down again, trying to drown my sorrows with a lousy cup of cheap instant, there's a strange page open on the screen; The Museum of Broken Relationships.
Now this is really weird. It's a museum that displays all the bits and pieces that remind you of your lost loves. I'm really confused about the false foot. Do you think some dude went off in the night, never to be seen again, leaving his foot next to the bed? I'm worried about the picture of an axe too, do you think it's a before or after thing, maybe a murder weapon? The teddy bears and such I understand. My sister has a whole shelf-full of those, each one named after the brother who gave it to her. I can't understand why being in love makes people hand-out baby toys, but then maybe I never understood anything about being in love anyway.
Anyway, the boss says, get over it, stick your stuff in this museum and move on. I see it's got an online version too so you can just take photos of all the stuff or forward all your old emails or sms messages there. They'll keep it all safe for another day. An archive of lost love.
So I start to wonder what I'd put in this archive, and why. Definitely the card from my phone, with all the lovey-dovey messages that I don't want to read anymore because I know they're all lies. But I should keep them. Maybe one day they'll make me laugh at. Maybe the empty box from the cigarettes we smoked in bed. Definitely the scarf she gave me the night we went to watch Bafana Bafana lose at the fan-park. I was wearing that scarf the night she told me she needed 'some space'. Space for what! Or for who?
So I get all these things and some other odds and ends together, and put it in a box. It looks a bit silly, like some of the stuff in the Museum of Broken relationships. Anyone else would think it was just a pile of junk, but I don't. Every object triggers a memory, a painful one. Every object tells a story, my story. I imagine making a museum of my own life. Putting all the stuff I've carried around for years into boxes. The bits and pieces of school stuff, the sign from my father's office door and his business cards - he's late now so he doesn't need them anymore - , the old notes from the courses I've studied. But who would be interested. Who would even know what any of these things meant, if I'm not around to tell their story.
So why do I hold on to my archive of heartbreak? Because I want to be able to remember one day. I want to be able to hold this cigarette box in my hand. It's the only hard evidence I have to show that this dream, which became a nightmare, really existed. This cigarette box, that she touched, is not litter, it's a gateway to the memories I might want to be to reclaim one day. If my heart ever stops hurting.