A local Chase bank branch called me. They said they had tried to get a hold of me for months. “No, you haven’t,” I tell the guy. He tells me they sent letters to a house I lived in 10 years ago, despite that on file they have my most current address. Cue my irritation.
“Our branch is closing and we need you to come get the contents of your safe deposit box,” he tells me. FUCK. I managed to score the biggest safe deposit box size they offer anywhere in southern California. I don’t eff around when it comes to keeping my valuables safe from fires and house-breaking hooligans.
Admittedly, I wasn’t in the best frame of mind as I drove to the branch. A dream I had a few days ago has really messed with my head. It’s left me in an emotional fog that I’m eager to snap out of. At least this trek to the bank gave me much needed alone time since I’m stuck in my house with family members and my son’s behavioral therapists all the time.
If you ask me what’s in that safe deposit box, I’ll tell you, “life insurance policies, pink slips for the cars, my university degree, some jewelry, stuff like that.”
I went in, dumped the contents into a large bag, signed some papers, then bailed out. Back in my car, I glanced over at the bag. There, on the top of the pile, was my wedding DVD.
Being in a heightened state of emotion, seeing that DVD was like twisting the knife already in my heart counter-clockwise.
It seems I forgot that my safe deposit box also contained multiple copies of my wedding DVD and wedding photo negatives (yes, I got married that long ago). Then I remember that at home we have our wedding albums. My wedding dress still sits hangs, waiting to be dry-cleaned.
My wedding day was possibly the happiest day of my life. Does a divorce nullify the best day ever? Logically, no, it does not. But emotionally, it seems like the equivalent of throwing red paint on the white fur coat of my memories.
What happens to the division of memories?
When my husband first grieved at the news, he angrily demanded his mother’s engagement ring back; he proposed to me with it. “Of course,” I told him. He tried to get a reaction of out me by asking for my wedding rings back; I played to his adoration of our daughter and told him that we should save the diamond to make a necklace or something for her when she’s older.
The jewelry insurance company keeps spamming me to pay my yearly premium on my rings before the renewal date. It’s $120/year. I’m on the fence about renewing it even though I have no intention of ever wearing them again. Not insuring them just seems…wrong.
I knew my daughter wouldn’t ever wear my wedding dress because most women don’t wear their mother’s dresses; that’s retro. They wear their grandmother’s dresses because that’s vintage. I assumed one day I’d dry clean the dress and if I have a grandchild (boy or girl, I don’t give a shit about gender norms), they’d consider wearing it. But who wants to wear a cursed dress? Other divorced women hold Trash the Dress photoshoots but that’s not my style. Aside that it seems wasteful of a perfectly good dress, it feels disrespectful of my wedding day and the intentions behind the dress when I purchased it.
In other words, I have more loyalty to my dress and it’s objectives than I ever did for my husband and our wedding vows.
When it’s time to move out, who gets the photo negatives and wedding DVD? I wouldn’t throw them out because they’re still valuable memories. Plus, who knows: my kids might want to see those pictures one day. Right now, I don’t dare have my husband see the contents of the safe deposit box. I don’t need another emotional meltdown from him at the sight of our wedding day photos.
Because I chose this breakup, the onus is on me to lead the way in this separation. My husband isn’t jumping to sit down and discuss the division of assets or go through boxes of old things. He’s holding onto the status quo like a Karen clutching her pearls during Pride Week.
Getting these things from the safe deposit box was a good reminder that I need to keep things moving forward, even if we’re moving at the speed of lard. Being under the same roof with extra lockdown restrictions makes it too easy to feel like we’re back to our usual married selves (our usual, miserable, loveless, no communication, married selves).
While I’m excited about my life transformation in 2021, I constantly remind myself that I’m the one driving these changes. We can make copies of the physical memories; for me, I’ll keep the emotional memories in a mental box so they aren’t tarnished by the sledgehammer I took to my marriage.
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Previously published on medium
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Photo credit: by Raj Rana on Unsplash