Memory Keeper

A favorite saying of my mother is "we keep a part of every single person we meet". This way we can never forget anyone, not completely. A part of them always stays with us. 

I like to pretend I remember every tiny detail about everyone I've ever met, but I know that minds tend to grow quite full after a while and that we cannot hold on to every memory we make. After all, it would be too easy if we could choose which ones to keep and which ones to let go of.

It makes me wonder what kind of imprint I've left on all the lives I've touched. What kind of impact I've made. Sometimes when I feel like I don't even know myself, I wish I could gather all these different memories and pieces of me that stayed with somebody else and assemble them like a giant mosaic. Maybe this way I could look at myself and finally understand. I've been waiting for my pieces to fall into place for way too long. 

Even more than this, I wish I hadn't met so many people so I could remember you better. Everything I saved of you will never be enough. If I'd known you'd leave, I would have saved every scrap. 

Last week, I randomly found myself thinking about the days we'd spent at the sea, all sun-warmed skin and freckles and laughter. The water was the same shade of blue-green as your eyes. I remember words you liked to use, stupid jokes and whole conversations about nothing and everything. I remember things that are so trivial and normal that they shouldn’t even matter, but somehow they still do. 

And today the worst thing happened, and I thought I'd forgotten the sound of your laughter. For a moment I couldn't recall it. When it came back to me a few minutes later, a sound so pure and full of life and so, so familiar, I felt like an idiot for thinking I could ever forget. Not about you. Not in the slightest.

A friend once told me “you get to choose which memories you keep” and I haven’t been the same since. I’ve been sorting them into piles, keeping the good ones and discarding the bad ones, painting you in a whole different light. 

It’s the wind in your hair for me and kisses that taste like caramel, fingers brushing over a bag of popcorn, and slow dancing underneath the Christmas lights. There is no heavy heart as I watch you go with my nose pressed against the cold window. There is only laughter and shared secrets and pinky promises. No trace of an abandoned cup of coffee in the sink, its contents stone-cold. No photos I ripped apart or sweaters I threw away. How and why it all began remains. How and why it ended is a blur to me. 

I don’t waste time turning over the bad memories, cutting my fingertips on their edges. And it’s always fine until it isn’t. It doesn’t hurt until I meet you again and find that I deluded myself enough to expect to find warmth on your face when I look at you. When it’s only ever cold that stares back at me. Because you chose to remember and I chose to forget, you say, and the accusation is clear. 

But it’s not that easy. It’s not that easy, I think when I look at you and all I see is your tail lights vanishing around the corner. I see unanswered messages, ignored phone calls and the little notes you used to write me. Text me when you get home, I can’t stop thinking of you, I missed you a lot today. But they all lost their meaning when you lost your interest.

A friend once told me “you get to choose which memories you keep”. I should have told them they were wrong. I should have said: “memories stay the same, no matter if you choose to relive them or ignore them. But the people in those memories might change. They might change and no matter how much you wish you could live inside those fragments of your past, it won’t make them come back.”