History

Erosion of memory is an indispensable part of healing. One forgets, one gets past, one heals. When she was younger, she didn't believe she would one day be able to comfortably forget. In the angst of young and unrequited love, she strongly believed that one actually never forgot anything, only with time learned compulsively to get by. But as she grew older, it got real. It was actually possible to forget. And it wasn't necessarily an active activity. Memories faded quite automatically, passively, quietly. And before she consciously took note, many chapters of  her life had been lost. Suddenly she felt possessive about her past, however lackluster that had been. She felt unfairly dealt with, after all.

It felt so recent anyway. Once she started scraping off the surface, she counted with her fingers the number of years that had past, since. Not many. At least, not that many. But her slight wrinkles told her a different story, that she's older now. With a totally different set of  priorities. But then again, when did this happen? When did she get so old? She felt as if she would undo the Venetian blinds in her cubicle and see him on the other side. Through the glass, he felt immediate. He suddenly erupted from the past and felt so so so damn close in time and in space. Like he had jumped out of that continuum into this.

But the truth was far from this midday hallucination. He was nowhere around. You know how actual physical raw time space work. Once someone has passed, someone had passed. They ain't coming back for good. That said, how can memories be unfair. How can they self destruct? And so easily. Feeble recollections of events haunted her, grazed on her mind and taunted her. And she couldn't remember any further, any deeper. They had been so particularly staunch about keeping no memorabilia, there was nothing to cling to. How sometimes she jumped into the traps she herself had built.

Probably this doesn't make much sense. But she couldn't understand how she could totally completely absolutely forget a man who had loved her and who she had almost loved? Subconsciously she thought of the others like him in her life, and had nightmares about them. But never anything on him. How strange. How quietly he exited, never to reappear again. So much history gradually decayed in her mind and she didn't even realize except for now.

If she undid the blinds, just now, would he still be there though. She pondered.

1 comment:

PS said...

I am reading you after months. And I had completely forgotten how much I relate. Memory is a defence mechanism, isn't it?