a box named B

I had a really vivid dream about my ex from 5 years ago last night. I don't remember the details of it this late in the day but when I woke up the emotions were so fresh that I remembered how I felt when we were in love. Do you know what I mean? Like I'll always remember loving him but after years go by you can forget how it felt to be in love with that person. Well, because of this dream, it all came back to me.

Recently I moved to my new apartment and I had to go back to my mom's to sort through some old stuff to see what I wanted to keep or throw out. When I was dating B, the ex, he used to make fun of me for what he called my "boyfriend boxes." I would keep shoeboxes filled with ex-boyfriend memories; movie tickets, cards, letters, pictures. For some of them it wasn't even that I wanted to hang on to the memory, I just felt kinda bad throwing the stuff out, as if I was throwing the person away.

Well now, B is also in a box, in my mom's garage, and waaaaaay at the back of my heart, at the bottom left, buried under a really heavy tarp also called repression. I looked in the box and found this one gift he made me for our 2 year anniversary, one of my favorites from him. He made me a list of 24 memories for each month we had been dating and put it in a little frame. I remember when I found this gift 3 years ago, when I was dating a different guy D, and reading the list made me realize the following:
1) I couldn't think of one fond memory with D, let alone 24.
2) D would never love me the way B did.
3) It was over.

Is it kinda crazy that 5 years after B, I have yet to love another person the way I loved him? I used to believe that there was one true love for everyone. But what happens when that one true love married someone else? These feelings of confusion have been stirred up all over again, all because of a list in a frame in a box.