a little ditty about memory
I don’t remember things any more. Maybe I am just going crazy maybe I am just too tired to fill things up. My days are too full and my memory has been so taxed for so long now I write everything down to make sure I don’t lose it under the million other details that break to the surface of my mind just long enough to be forgotten.
I have lived my life at hyperspeed since I was 14 and now that I am so, so old I haven’t got any room left. I forget things I am going to do and feel horrible. I forget things people want and feel terrible. I make promises I cannot enforce and that is the worst feeling of all. I wish I knew why and I wish I could redo it.
It was too many summer nights smoking weed on the lawn; every time I smell a warm lawn I remember summer and weed and dancing in the sunset light. If only I hadn’t spent 17 stoned; maybe my poor little brain would be able to retain things. But 17 slowly crumpled under lighters, sweet smoke and freshly cut grass. Summer comes every year and I forget that now I have to be a grown-up; I remember instead kissing on the grass, watching the clouds float, watching my ceiling move late at night. Listening to music and understanding it better than anything else in the world.
I used to have a mind like a steel trap, the kind of mind that spelled things right the first time and never, ever, forgot a phone number. I still have scraps from those days: my worst enemy in 3rd grade’s name and phone number (Ellen Smith: 542-6339); making a paper cup and lining it in tape so it was waterproof; how I planned out hanging myself in the bathroom at recess. But I don’t remember the sweep of things, only the things that hurt the most. I couldn’t tell you the name of my softball team, but I could tell you about the time I didn’t get put in to pitch because the coach’s daughter was pitching instead. I could tell you about being the unpopular kid and the red hat I loved to wear. I could tell you the name of everyone in my 4th grade class. I could not tell you what I had for dinner last night.
I wonder what this means. I have no recent history; I remember where I lived and what my rooms smelled like. But I could not tell you what I have to get done today, or what I have gotten down; I have learned to live with the sinking sensation that there is something I am not getting done. There are people I forget about for a while. People ask me on Monday what I did over the weekend and I forget; it has all blurred together. There is something about living life at hyperspeed – I have forgotten what happened when, when I met people, whether I made things up or they really happened. I recognize faces but I don’t know why. Sometimes people know me but I don’t know them.
Memory is the power to remember birthdays and anniversaries. Memory is the ability to keep track of the important little details. When I was first getting to know my boyfriend he told me so many things about him that I don’t remember. I ask him if he wants Thai food even though he hates curry. I ask him if he has ever seen his favorite movie. I remember our first kiss, but I don’t remember the first time we had sex, exactly; I don’t remember when it was. Maybe on Halloween. Maybe just before Halloween. Maybe right after. I remember the story I made up to explain away the hickies but I don’t remember how I really got them. My history has become a series of lies – or maybe not lies, just my best guess at how things really happened.
All I have from the year I was 10 is black marker on my old bookshelf: I Hate My Family. Then I tried to disguise it. I don’t know why I hated my family. I don’t remember what my life was like back when I lived there; I remember locking myself in the bathroom and I remember wishing I lived with the Happy Hollisters or the Bobbsey Twins or even the kids from the Baby-Sitters’ Club. But I don’t remember what happened or why. I don’t remember why I still don’t like my family; it’s just what we do now. We don’t know how to be nice to each other. Life has become a series of habits and rituals: yell because that’s what you know; call the same people because you know their names. There is no room in my tired brain for new names and phone numbers, new rituals. I wash my face in the same way every time because that is how I don’t walk away with soap on my nose. I got all my scripts when I was younger and now I recite from memory. It is not as if the fights in my family are substantively different than they used to be. We all know our parts and that is all we can stand to remember. Maybe that is why I don’t remember more:
(Post a new comment)
(Post a new comment)
|
