Have you ever burned/otherwise forcefully destroyed a relic that reminds you of a painful past experience?

Not just thrown out but actually set on fire or incinerated or exploded or something, so as to completely destroy it. I see this in movies from time to time - e.g a character burns his/her old love letters from an ex - but has anyone done this in real life? And did you feel any sort of catharsis/"now I can move on" feeling after you did it? (Feel free to divulge as much/little as possible.)

For the record, I've never actually done this (thread qn inspired by watching 'Hugo' just now)

done it with study notes, hardly counts?

cigarettes. one by one over many years.

hahaha

i was angry one day (several years ago) and someone suggested writing myself a letter and setting it on fire. i tried that, the apartment and hallway outside filled up with smoke immediately, and i had to put out the burning letter in the sink.

thread makes me think of maus, such a powerful part of the story

pointless story:

years ago i knew this guy whose "therapist" counseled him to destroy and/or discard every last thing relating to his ex-gf. bad energy or whatever.

at the time i was kinda disdainful and thought it was a bunch of hooey.

but now i can see how that sort of thing makes sense and could be beneficial. we all carry so much psychic gunk that we could do better to jettison. the idea obv is not to destroy the person associated with the stuff, but to get rid of counterproductive forces in our life in an expedient manner. ritual actions can seem silly when viewed from a distance, but i think they can be very effective, judiciously applied

varg burned churches down as he was so scarred by being forced to go to sunday school.

knew a guy in high school who cut apart a picture of him and his ex-gf together

tried to convince my friend that 'seemingly cropped from photo w/ prev gf' ought to disqualify visitors to her dating profile

I was cleaning out my dad's attic recently and found my parents' divorce papers from 1988. Thought about burning them but just ripped them up.

The other day I saw one of those obnoxious family-group stickers on the back of an SUV, with the mom figure clearly and deliberately excised (the outline was still visible on the glass), leaving only the dad and two kids.

I've wondered about those stickers and how people might handle them post-divorce.

No--I've told you all before about my mental issues about destroying things.

The last time I went to the old house in Englewood, I found a signed and sealed birthday card from my mother ripped to pieces.

To me from my mother for my last birthday, I should say.

All the time, feels good. I started years ago when shredding an old love letter just didn't bring satisfaction. This was before shredders. I tore it up and threw it in the trash. It sat on top of the trash for several hours. I spotted it and could still make out sentences so I shredded it again. That seemed to do it until I saw "love" on this tiny piece of paper so at that point I burned it along with photos and card in a Mexican chiminea. Been how I deal with moving on ever since. Never burned gifted books though. All gifts I end up tossing or giving away to friends. Never burned mix tapes, just smashed them. I have no relic box to speak of.

Actually, I have sold books to Half-Price with the inscriptions still in them. I guess I secretly hoped whoever gave them to me would one day come upon the copy and get a kick out of it. I always liked finding books with long, love inscriptions written in them.