The Box in the Cupboard: Letting Go of My First Relationship

I was 20 years old and going through my first real heartbreak.

Anyone who’s been in a young relationship that ends will know the feeling like something, or someone, has died. I was emotionally wrecked. I didn’t know how to regulate my feelings, let alone what emotional maturity even meant. I just felt like someone had stabbed me in the heart.

I couldn’t imagine moving forward.

How do you go on when the person you loved is suddenly just… gone?

I happened to be talking to a friend about it, one of those offhand, vulnerable moments and told him how much I was struggling.

He said, “Get everything you have of the two of you, photos, gifts and put it all in a box. Then stick the box at the back of your cupboard. And forget about it.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll try it.”

So I gathered it all up, every memory, and placed it in a box.

Then I tucked it deep into the back of my bedroom cupboard.

And strangely… it worked.

It was like the weight of her, of us, of everything, was taken off me.

It gave me space.

It set me free.

Years later, I stumbled across that box. I opened it out of curiosity and couldn’t believe the things inside. Old photos. Handwritten notes. Cards. A piece of a life that had once meant everything to me.

I laughed at some of it. Smiled at others.

And then I decided to let most of it go.

By then, I’d realised something important: life is like a book.

Each stage is a chapter.

And sometimes, you get stuck in a rough chapter, maybe for months, maybe for years and it feels like that chapter is your entire life.

But it’s not.

Eventually, the story moves on.

You turn the page.

And one day, when the whole book is finished, you’ll look back and see it for what it really was:

You can’t judge your whole life by one part of it.

One heartbreak. One mistake. One season of pain.

Life can only be understood near the end, when the story is almost complete.

So make sure yours is a book worth reading.