Do you put your friend’s birthdays on your online calendar? I do. I’m always forgetting details like that so I put it in my calendar as soon as I know it, and have it automatically show up every year.
I am really, really good at forgetting.
Maybe it’s my neurodivergent brain that can’t keep anything straight, or maybe it’s my mature and rational psyche, desperately filtering out seemingly useless information in an attempt to get me to pull my life together. Whatever the cause is, I always forget.
Except for every year when I check my monthly calendar to see what’s up. Then suddenly—and frankly, not consensually— I am flooded with a memory of a face, a body, a recap of a specific point in time that was once significant, but now feels so…empty. And I remember why I put it down in my calendar in the first place, and why I haven’t, after all these years, deleted it.
During their life trajectory, there have been moments where the paths of individuals fall perpendicular to mine, and pass through my inner circles, creating moments of happiness and moments of pain. But then the moment ends, and our designated trajectories continue to push us elsewhere. Like, cool. It happened, and now it’s over.
Maybe my problem is that I don’t find too much value in remembering pain. A perhaps immature outlook, I know. But one that has allowed me to focus on navigating current and future moments of pain instead. The consequence however, being that I don’t remember the happy moments that the preexisting pain corresponds to either. I don’t remember the drive, the kiss, the butterflies, the date… But, I also don’t remember the lying, the manipulated guilt of suspicion, or the feeling of my heart carrying the apparently heavy weight of my naiveté and burning a pit through my stomach.
Is the tradeoff worth it? Well, maybe. Perhaps that’s why I never actually end up taking your birthday off. One day a year, for just a brief moment, I remember it all; the good and the bad, and then I move on. I guess I’m not too good at forgetting after all.
Happy birthday.
-xoxo, Mo
Be the first to comment