Someone in my street keeps harassing me and my family, and I lost my temper 2 days ago and whacked a bunch of things off a shelf. One of the heavier things ended up falling on my soup bowl and smashed a third of it. That specific soup bowl has been discontinued for many years. The manufacturer did make very similar soup bowls just with a different pattern on them, but they’re old and only being sold on places like Ebay. I’m going to take the bowl out of the trash tomorrow and measure it in detail and maybe post it on Facebook to see if anyone has this bowl. I feel like a whole bunch of nice memories have been literally smashed, like that bowl was with me for all that time and I smashed it by accident. That bowl was like a friend and reminded me of a time in my life where I was happy so just ordering some generic soup bowl that isn’t extremely similar or the same is going to remind me of what I’ve lost.
That’s super normal. It’s important to remember objects don’t have any importance behind what we assign to them. If you still value that relationship maybe you can find a way to preserve it physically like the other commenters have suggested or it may be time to acknowledge that portion of your life is over and this can be symbolic closure. I have a beautiful handmade quilt from an ex-girlfriend and I haven’t seen her in almost a decade yet I keep it because the meaning behind it at the time is still important to me
An important thing to remember in these situations: “you cannot control your emotions, but you can control your reaction to them and allow that to shape you in the future”
❤️