I never kept diaries because I have a very snoopy mother, but I had two boxes of letters from my first big love-of-my-life, from whom I was parted prematurely, picked back up with years later, and things ended VERY badly. Burning these felt like a good and necessary thing, but I lived in a house with no fireplace and a city with a no-burn policy. I decided to shred them (by hand, I had no shredder) and put them in a Weber BBQ grill. Once set alight, they made oodles of smoke and were sending little bits of lit paper into the sky. I was sort of freaked out about the no-burn thing and the massive amount of smoke these were making, sort of freaked about the karmic aspect of burning these letters, and then I heard FIRE TRUCKS coming towards my house. Convinced they were coming for ME, I ended up putting the lid on the BBQ, which only made more smoke but didn't put them out. So then I took the lid off and doused them with water. Of course, the fire trucks were not coming for me, and the papers ended up charred and soggy, and I scooped them into the trash at that point. Not the quite dramatic cleansing experience I had imagined. So, make sure you have a spot where you can burn them openly is my advice.
post #21 of 22
1/27/11 at 12:24pm
No way.
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