What do you do with painful memories?

I recently had a very strong and powerful friendship end in my life.  It has been painful and awful and for the sake of all involved, the person will remain nameless and I will not go into any details on it.  While I have never personally been divorced, I have been through a few in my life and it feels similar.  I know some might compare it to a death but I wouldn’t.  In death, the finality of it takes away the hope and I personally just tend to focus on the positive memories and not the pain.  I know this is not true for everyone but it has been my personal experience with this kind of loss.  Where as in divorce, separation, whatever you want to call it, that doesn’t happen organically for me and I tend to focus on the negative.  I feel betrayed.  I feel like the entire friendship was fraudulent and made me a fool.  I feel so angry I can hardly keep my eyeballs straight and I feel hurt like I have never been before.  And I am using all the “I” statements as I write because these feelings are mine.  They’re only mine.  I just recently remembered that I really can’t change the others and nor can I change what should or could have happened.   I can only change me as I move forward.   All the “shoulds” and “coulds” of that time are history.  They’re “didn’ts” because they didn’t happen.  They’re unchangeable.  They’re memories.  Some of them are too painful to consider and some are too beautiful to remember.  So what happens to them while I heal?

The walls of my home were covered in these memories.  Every room had something in it that brought it all back.  And when I say it brought it all back, I mean it physically made me sick.  I have spent the last couple of weeks dry heaving or worse when the memories compile.  Don’t get me wrong, I lost weight and love that (once a dancer, always a dancer) but I could really use a day without feeling sick.  I tried to give back some of the memories that I could but was slapped back for having an emotional response at all.  Being called names and told lies about doesn’t necessarily drowned out the feelings of betrayal.  I tried to destroy a memory and just made myself feel sicker.  I am now trying to tuck things away in folders and boxes just to keep them in some sort of storage on the off chance that things change.  But, I know in my heart that they won’t.  The thing about this kind of ending is it’s just feels too painful to ever heal from.  I’ll never not question how this situation gets spun or whether or not sharing this vulnerability is dangerous for my safety in the friendship.  I’ll never be myself with this person again.  Nor should I.  So, the friendship is over and the memories have to find a long term storage place.   But, in the age of technology, where is that?  What does that look like?
In trying to refill the bare walls of my house, I started a Mixtiles order.  But, in order to make that, I had to scroll through my photo files.  Technology chronicles your photo memories by calendar and yes, you can apply filters and such to try to block out certain people but I feel like that filter is the same as when I watch Facebook friends apply the no wrinkle filter as if we have never seen that human in real life.  It’s a lie by omission because the reason this is all so awful is that my life with this friend was so completely entangled.  We really were almost like family.  In many ways, it’s worse because I have a lot of family I never see or hear from.  But, this was a chosen partnership in my life and it’s gone.  Not only is it gone, it’s like it wasn’t ever real.  So, what do I do?  I can filter my photo library.  I can remove the pictures from my house.  I can keep moving forward and I can even try just being mean.  But, I am still sick about it.  How do I deal with that?
Oh, I have no answers to these questions and I am not even seeking advice.  Maybe I am being dramatic.  What’s so wrong with that?  How is losing your best friend supposed to be plain and simple?  How is it not dramatic?  How is it not painful and life changing.  My daughter fell and scraped her ankle yesterday.  She screamed when it happen.  Then we spent the majority of the evening icing it and snuggling her on the couch with a popsicle and her favorite show.  FOR A SCRAPE!  I am expected to just move on as if nothing happened because I am an adult and feelings should be mature or at least compartmentalized.  And for the most part, I am faking it pretty well.  I doubt a lot of people know what I feel like on the inside.  But, is that okay?  A young person I know makes me angry all the time because whatever is going on in her life is always spilling out on those around her.  It infuriates me.  But, I think I am jealous.  I think in some ways, she might be right.  Why are we constantly forced to hide how we feel?  Why are we constantly told to just move on?  Pull an Elsa and let that shit go.  Why?  And when you say let it go, what does that even look like?  Should I just take every memory I have and Angela Basset it Waiting to Exhale style in the driveway?  Will that make it go away?  I think it would probably just create a fire hazard, a huge fine, and a gigantic mess to clean up.  But maybe that messiness would help.  Maybe that’s an authentic crap load of clean up to have to physically go through that would have healing on the other side of it.  Maybe.  
Anyway, this has no point.  There is no real beginning or end and definitely no solution but sharing what I have been going through lately might be healing for me. And as I said earlier, I am the only one I can work on right now. But, in truth, my open sharing of my pain is not new.  It’s in no way a surprise to anyone who knows me well.  Dance was my first true love because dance allowed me to express pain and joy in the most authentic way I could to the masses.  It gave me a communication style that my words just couldn’t ever keep up with and the more people I could speak to that way, the more healed I felt.  Dance is my true voice but I can’t really dance this one out.  Believe me, I have tried lately.  So, here is a blog.  It can be considered hyperbolic and attention seeking if you want it to.  That’s for you to decide.  It might be seen as giving away power to the lost friends.  I don't think honesty is without power, though.  If Ani Difranco, or Bruce Springsteen, or any true artist out there, kept all their emotions to themselves, I would never know how to deal with most problems in my life.  I am thankful for their vulnerability and truthfulness of expression.  So, here is mine.  I am sad.  I am sick.  I am so mad.  And for now, the memories are like road signs to a roundabout with no exit.  I do hope that time will heal things.  I’m looking forward to the other side of this.  For now, I will take my own advice I give in Spin class.  There are some mountains you climb and some you go around and then there are the ones you slice through with power and speed.  I tried the last one first but in reality, I think this one is a very steep climb and it’s going to take a while to make it to the peak of.  The good news is, eventually I get to coast down.  Oh God, please let the top come soon.