After the split, you're left with an abandoned attic's worth of stuff: on your phone and hard drive, in your inbox. It's stuff that used to matter, and still does. It's stuff that hurts. It's stuff you loved. What do you do with it?

分手后，你身边多了一堆几乎能丢弃到阁楼的东西：手机上、电脑上、邮箱里，到处都是它们的身影。它们曾经是对你而言很重要的东西，现在依旧是。它们是能勾起你眼泪的东西，也是你曾爱过的东西。你该拿它们怎么办？

It's impossible to plow through a committed relationship in an industrialized nation without piling up an abundant digital record. You'll have chat transcripts, tagged photos on Facebook, beautiful photos from a DSLR, email letters, Skype call screenshots, texts—so, so many texts. Your first instinct will be to throw it all away.

在这个发达的工业化国家，一段认真的感情结束后必然会留下大量的数字记录。你们的聊天记录、Facebook上标着名字的合影、数码相机里的美丽合照、邮件往来、Skype网络电话的截图、手机短信……大量的手机短信。你的想法肯定是把它们全扔光、删光吧。

That's not a reflex to be ashamed of—just like you wouldn't want to stare at a framed photo of your ex while you're hurting, you don't want to look at hundreds of messages and JPEGs detailing that person either. We're all hypersensitive when it happens, and we're living in an age of hyper-info. There are more grains of salt to catch in your heart wound than ever before. This isn't easy—but let's try.

有这种想法不必羞愧。当你正在伤心的时候，不想看到那个前任的照片；抑或是不想看到跟ta之间的数百条短信、各种亲密照一样，这些都可以理解。分手后我们都会变得极度敏感，尤其身处这个充斥着过度信息的时代。对于我们来讲，心上的伤口会被洒更多的盐巴。这不是件容易事儿。但是让我们来试着应对吧。

Wait

等待

Wait a month. Wait longer. Wait until you can look at his or her Facebook profile without feeling something bad in your chest, or the urge to throw your laptop. No good decision, in this century or any other, has ever been made in the fresh wake of a breakup. Please, please don't throw your laptop.

等一个月，或更久。直到你可以坦然直视ta的Facebook主页而不会感到阵阵心痛，或有种直接想扔了笔记本的冲动。从古到今，没有什么正确的决定是在刚分手的时候做出的。请千万遏制住那种冲动，别扔了笔记本。

Photos

照片

Don't delete these. Really, don't. You'll regret it if you do. Not because maybe someday you'll get back together and be so glad you kept it all. You probably won't. But these pictures aren't just small monuments to a failed romance, they're high-resolution instants from your life, recorded forever, unfading. It's not just your ex's smile that you miss and wish you could have back, it's the way you were at a particular moment a shutter snapped and a digital sensor touched light. It's your dog, your apartment, your haircut, your vacation, your job, your old bike—everything that was you for that moment, regardless of who you were dating and who you loved. This is matter you'll want years and decades from now—don't be rash and trash it.

别删了它们。真的别这样做，否则你会后悔的。并不是说以后你们还有复合的可能，到时候你就会庆幸没有删了它们，因为你们很可能不会复合了；而是因为这些照片不仅是一段失败恋情的纪念，同时也是你人生某些时刻的缩影和记录，它们是的不可磨灭的记忆。它们对你来讲，不仅仅装着你迷恋的前任恋人的微笑（你多么希望能让这笑容再次回到你身边），它是每一个快门声后对你人生的光影记录。它里面记录了你的狗、你的公寓、你的发型、你的假期、你的工作、你的老单车——所有你在那一刻的模样，而无论你在和谁约会，又在爱着谁。这是你会想要去珍惜一辈子的东西，不要因为一时冲动而把它们都删掉。

Instead, vault it. Copy everything that's too much to look at onto an external hard drive or some remote backup system, and then delete it from your machine. Put that hard drive in a sock drawer or under your bed. Give it to a friend. Place it where it won't distract and won't harm, but, when you're ready, can provide a vivid reminder of who you used to be. That's incredibly powerful! Don't destroy it on a whim.

把它珍藏起来。把那些不忍看的东西复制到外接硬盘或移动储存设备上，然后把电脑里的都删了。把硬盘锁进装袜子的抽屉，或是塞到床下。交给朋友保存也行。总之，把它放在一个不会让你分心和伤心的地方，然后等你恢复过来的时候，它便能重放过去那个栩栩如生的你。这可棒极了！千万别冲动之下毁掉它。

Playlists

播放列表

Yeah, toss these. All leftover playlists will do is smear heartbreaking meaning and nostalgia over songs you'd otherwise enjoy. Remember, you made this playlist explicitly for your ex—you tailored songs you both love in an order you thought might make them smile and miss you. And all those memories could swamp you based on nothing but this otherwise innocuous list of MP3s. So get rid of the list. Keep the songs though.

没错，扔了它们。所有那些你们曾经喜欢过的歌曲，都会在下一次播放的时候，提醒你那些心碎的过往并唤起你的追忆之心来。记住，这些歌曲列表是你为前任专门设置的，它们是你俩都喜欢的歌，你曾为了让ta开心和想念你而特意排列了顺序。这些回忆能让你凭空悲伤，所以把这些播放列表删掉吧，但歌可以保留。

Emails

邮件

Emails can be as banal and brief as any text message, but there are plenty of exceptions: long ones penned while abroad, or traveling, mail with attachments, breakup letters, I Miss You letters. Rather than sift through everything, archive it all. Do a search for his or her email, select all, and pack it away into a folder. Remember: this email is part of your life history. It includes details you won't remember by the time you're long over the breakup, and you'll be grateful for them.

电子邮件有时候就跟手机短信一样乏味而简洁，不过也有例外：比如出国或旅游时写的长邮件、带附件的邮件、以及分手信和思念信。与其筛遍所有邮件，不如全部归档。然后把和ta有关的邮件找出来，全选并放到一个专属文件夹。记住：邮件也是你的生活记录。它们包含了那些你在分手很久以后会忘记的细节，而到时候你会庆幸自己保留了它们。

Texts

手机短信

Delete—this is just an invitation to wallow and/or leap back into ill-advised contact. Both are bad for you.

删了吧。这些短信只会让你沉溺于悲伤或诱使你去联系那个不该再联系的人。无论怎样都对你没好处。

Facebook tags

Facebook的圈人标记

Again, an opportunity to wallow, a web browser shortcut to melancholy. And who wants a future prospect to see a bunch of pictures with your ex?

这个也是诱使你沉溺于往事的坏东西，而且还是个浏览器的捷径。任何希望有个光明未来的人都不会想看到一堆自己和ex的合影的！

There should be a pattern emerging here. It's difficult, but you need to discern what baggage is going to be useful even after all the heavy, horrible, hurtful emotions wear off. What are the bytes that'll have significance on their own, without the love connection? What stuff will remind you about your life in some broader sense than a relationship that occupied some months or years of it? What'll be that GIF or TXT you wish to hell you hadn't erased, because who knows what it might've reminded you of about the way you used to be?

但要懂得区分。尽管这很难，但你需要分辨出那些在你消化掉沉重、恐惧和心碎感后，仍能带来作用的东西。哪些是抹去爱情痕迹后依旧意义重大的照片？哪些是能体现你生命印记而非仅仅记录你爱情长跑的照片？哪些是你删除以后必定会后悔的东西？无论是gif还是txt格式的东西，它们之中总有些能唤醒你对过去的记忆。

Those things deserve backup. The rest was just noise all along.

这些东西值得备份。其他的都只是浮云。