11/12/13

I wish my memory wasn't so good. I was told that weed can suppress that,  I know more than enough people with mild short-term memory loss from the amount of THC in their bloodstream to believe it. All that weed has done for me is I forget to turn assignments in on time, and maybe what I had for dinner last night (ground turkey stuffed peppers).  I can still recount most of my life, regardless of whether the memories are fond or turn me into a rabid animal gnawing at the bars of my enclosure. And I wish I wouldn't. I wish that the boy who hurt 14-year-old me was lost in newer memories of the boys who held my hand walking home. I wish I couldn't recount the words my sister screamed at me when she had a bad day or the custody fights I had with my dad at the top of the staircase outside of my doorless room. I don't know what to do with all of it. I remember every bad day in vivid detail; to the same degree, I wonder why I can't remember the happy ones quite as well. 

There remains a part of me that is happy about it. I'm glad I know I won't forget my Mom's smile when I told her I got accepted into college, or the rumble in my stomach before getting picked up to go on a date I was particularly excited about. I know there will come a day when my brain will beg my memories to be on the same page for more than a day. When I am old and my 20s feel as distant as learning how to ride my bike with training wheels outside of my Mom's boyfriend's house on Front St, I will wish my memory was as spry as it is now.  I count my blessings in my ability to recall the most minor details. In more ways than one, it makes me happy. Knowing all the people who will exist with me regardless of how far they have moved away. How many people can remember the first time they tried steak, sitting on my Dad's back porch after the rest of my family had all finished their dinners and gone inside, while I choked and re-swallowed the same bite three times over trying to think of anything other than the texture? It's a blessing that I don't want to take advantage of, as much as I wish I could. 

I remember what love as a child felt like. I met my best friend in 1st grade, and the love I felt for her continues to this day. Even as a preteen, the heartbreak I experienced when she picked my friend over me or was told I looked better with long hair after a fresh haircut from Bonnie's down the street from my Dad's house was real. I remember the pang in my stomach in the back of my Grandma's red Nissan when I realized I didn't want a 5th-grade girlfriend. Love feels like the most common denominator in the more painful memories; the reason I'm writing this now. More than anything, I want to know how many memories of others I exist in. Did my other friend experience the same thing when she picked me over him for a few weeks? Does he remember it as clearly as I can now? Does the boy who hurt 14-year-old me remember what he did that made me cry to my parents who didn't even know the boy existed at all; most importantly does he remember why?  

Maybe it isn't a frustration with how distinct my memories are, but rather a frustration with not being able to let go. Being someone so attached to the emotional side of myself, feelings are very important to me, as broad as that sounds. When I focus, I can feel what I felt at a particularly painful memory, though as much as I try to do anything but that. My memory holds a kind of power over who I am. When I see a Snapchat memory from a time I now romanticize, I have to actively fight off the desire to relapse into that mindset. One year ago, today, I was talking to someone with no real impact on my life whom I haven't gone a day without considering since. One year ago tomorrow, I never spoke to them again. He lives in Jersey, even when I'm on the East Coast, somewhere I try to avoid. He liked Dark Souls and Radiohead and called me pretty when I wasn't looking at the Facetime call. I'd put on makeup after my shower because I wanted to impress him, he had never liked a guy before, and I wanted to show how highly I wanted him to think of me. And I didn't mind. I didn't enjoy wearing makeup, as often as I do anyway, nor do I like being the experiment. I don't like being thought of as a middle-ground between a man and a woman, but it was worth it to me; because I knew without makeup we'd still have the same taste in music, and he'd still ask about how my classes were. He liked me. Where do I put that? How do I remove the sound of his voice from my mind, how do I forget events the memories of which no longer serve me?

 The power memories have over me is nothing short of a nuisance. Everyone has painful memories, objects, smells, and mindsets that take them back, for a short time, into the person they were when the memories were formed. I just happen to be acutely sensitive to such things. I time travel with a single scent of the dandruff-ridden sheets in my step-brother's room or the moth-balls of my Mom's grandmother's basement. It's an innate longing to feel it all again, to be who I am now, dealing with problems then, and now being grown enough to handle them; to protect the mind of a nine-year-old boy who just wanted a brother, or a friend, or a love interest, or a family who didn't hide my pink toys and tell the neighbors kids I was gay before I even knew what I was supposed to like. Therapy tells people in my position to heal their inner child, as do many annoying people on TikTok with divorced parents who share 50/50 custody of them and live in the same county. I don't feel as though my inner child is in need of help. He's fine. He got through it, I'm fine, I don't feel a desire to buy myself a Barbie that I don't have to hide. I want to live in harmony with all of my selves. To find some kind of way to not let the memories I don't share with others exist in a part of my brain able to look at them with fondness, rather than guilt.

I don't know what else to say. hehe. I started writing this yesterday and now I'm just out of my thoughts.