forgotten memories

Does it scare you that your entire life is in the past?

The breath you just took, the sixty-fifth math class you’ve taken this year, your favorite song that you just finished listening to for the hundredth time. The time you went cliff jumping at your cabin, the era of your life when you used to be obsessed with baking miniature cupcakes, the day you met your best friend. Everything that has ever happened to you is in the past, even the things that happened 0.0000001 seconds ago. Your entire life is nothing but a memory. You are a walking participle of the past.

The scary part about that is that you don’t remember all of your life, either. You have forgotten things that have happened to you, things you have said or done. In twenty years, you won’t remember this blog post, or what you wore on January 23rd, or how many times you’ve cut your hair. You won’t remember any of it. I believe that’s pretty selfish of us human beings to only remember ‘the important things’.

A little while ago, four of my longtime best friends (Jen, Alexa, and Tori) were joking about something that happened at this hilarious sleepover we had when we were kids—and I couldn’t remember it. I tried and tried to rack my brain, searching every corner to try and picture it, but I couldn’t do it. I remembered all of our other sleepovers.

Tori, Alexa, Jen and I at
the Bite of Seattle last summer

I remember Alexa and I’s first playdate, when we threw water down my wooden hallway and slid on our knees to create an Indoor Waterslide. I remember sitting with Jen and her brother JJ as he defeated Robot Patrick in the Spongebob Game while simultaneously arguing over what the largest number in the world was (we had decided on ‘infinity google plux’). 

I remember the day Tori moved to Tennessee—I was sitting at the bottom of my driveway with tears in my eyes as she ran out of her parents’ car and tackled me in a hug. She pulled a piece of Dubble Bubble gum out of her pocket and wrapped it in my hands. I started to cry, because she remembered that Dubble Bubble gum was my favorite. And then, she drove away and left.

I remembered everything else but what they were laughing about. It killed me because that memory was important to them and I had carelessly forgotten it, as if it didn’t matter. I have too many memories to even name, and each of them mean so much to me. My memories are my biggest treasures and to think of losing them could bring me to tears. 

This terrifies me. The idea of forgetting a good memory is petrifying because these are your memories and they define your life story. I exist, I ought to owe it to someone to be able to remember and be blessed for all of the good times I’ve had, and it’s not in my place to forget. No one else knows you better than you know yourself. You may share memories with other people, but they always mean something different to them than they mean to you.