The only way I could cope with a very unhappy marriage was to pour out my heart on paper to try and make sense of what was going on. They were invariably tear-soaked. Most of those pieces of paper - written over ten years of unhappiness I put in a file and hid away, not wanting the children to see them or read about their father and his 'ways' (That is a euphemism for heck of a lot more!)
Last week, doing a little bit of unpacking of boxes that haven't been touched since we moved in to this house (me and my OH - who is so very different to my ex husband) I came across my innocent looking plastic folder. I read through those out-pourings and felt quite sick, It brought back all those lonely and scared nights to me. It was horrible reading about those events.
I divorced my husband, eventually, and carried on alone, and even ensured the children stayed in touch with their father. What happened is water under the bridge now and we have all moved on. I decided I did not want to be reminded of those awful times because my words brought back all the old fear and sadness/misery. More than anything I didn't want the children to find them and feel any guilt, or indeed change their feeling for their father. It would make for shocking reading.
So, I tore up every single bit of paper into small pieces and threw them into a big bowl of water in the sink. After half an hour I fished out the soggy scraps of paper and wrung them out into tiny little balls. They became impossible to read and those actions were so cathartic. I was grinning as a squeezed out the water from them. The little paper pellets went into the compost bin.
I felt a weight lifting from me as I discarded that part of my past. It was amazing. Now for all the other things I have been holding on to, including diaries from teenager years (really embarrassing) and thoughts and musings from other years committed to paper.
I am moving forward, not looking back, and it feels good.