Memories Forgotten...
Sometimes I wonder if you still think of me.
Sometimes I close my eyes and imagine how it would be like if things turned out differently. What if I had done things differently? What if I had chosen otherwise? How would things be like today? Whatever it would have been, I know it would have been anything but this.
Not that I’m putting my whole life on hold thinking about all these things. As Robert Frost said “In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on” Go on we must, and go on we shall. I’m moving on, I’m getting on with my life.
It’s just that I find myself waking up in the middle of the night as I write this, in a foreign land, tossing and turning, unable to sleep, and despite trying the hardest not to… I still think of you. I look out my window, up to the sky in the quiet of the night, feeling pretty sure that you are fast asleep. Do you ever think of me, like how I am of you now? A silly question really. It’s not like I’m ever going to get an answer. And I’m not sure I even want to hear one anyway.
And yet I continue to wonder. A bigger question comes to me.
If I’ve really moved on, why the hell am I still thinking about you? Isn’t it supposed to be that once you put someone behind you, you think about them once a year of five years down the line or something? Why? Why am I still thinking of you? And if I do, is there anything wrong with that? Does moving along mean having to erase the memory of the person from your mind?
In the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, both the lovers decided they want each other erased from their memory. He does so because he’s hurt that she decided to erase him first. Life seemed so painful; all the beautiful memories turn into spikes that stab at the heart when brought to mind. Happy are those who forget, for ignorance is bliss. But halfway through erasing, he realizes that for all the hurt and pain, there were plenty of things about her he loved and wanted to remember even if things were not working out. Those memories were precious to him. And the entire movie is about him struggle to keep the memory from being erased from his mind. And bloody hell, I was thinking about you after it all.
Do you ever wish that you don’t remember any of it? Is it now a stupid mistake you just want to forget? Or have you already?
I pick up the card you made and read the words you said, and the little smiley you seemed to use so often. The little folded paper carrying the CD you gave is in my bag. I laugh at myself. Geez, I didn’t realize I’ve been carrying it in my bag all these while. I’m not quite sure what to do with all of these things. I’m not sure what do with the memory of you that is now embedded in these items and in my head. I didn’t give you many things, but I do wonder what you’ve done with them. Did you throw it away? Did you bury it in the farthest corners of your home? And what of the memories? Have you buried whose? Have they been overwritten? Forgotten?
It doesn’t matter. These are just things I ask myself at moments like these in the dead of the night when I’m feeling weak, wistful… and just plain stupid. They don’t need answering, they don't even need reading... they just need saying.
As far as you go, this is what I promised you, and this is what I will be in your life.
Non-existent.
“Blessed are the forgetful; for they get the better even of their blunders” - Friedrich Nietzsche
