Why Is It So Hard To Remember How To Forget?
If forgetting is easy, the sum of life will become null and void
Photo by Ali Pazani from Pexels
Forgetting is hard. For me, it’s almost quite impossible. I leave pieces of myself everywhere I go, and there, I stay. Like a plant, I develop roots that hold onto the ground of those places from once upon a time.
Of course I forget — sometimes. Selectively perhaps. I forget about tasks and appointments. Faces of people I met. I’m hopeless with names and don’t get me started with birthdays, anniversaries, and milestones. Importance is entirely irrelevant. But who’s to decide what is important? For whom and when?
I remember the smell of a torrential downpour falling from the dark clouds above. The time he wrapped his arms tight around me as if the storm might carry me away in its invisible currents. My thoughts stopped. A mental snapshot was taken in that nanosecond; I am forever locked in that frame.
I remember the wind eddied and swirled, lifted my hair into a dance while my heart was breaking, fracture by fracture. Grief choked the breath from my body. I recall everything from the soft bluish tinge of the grass to the way they sway in the rhythmic wave of that late summer evening.Â
The moments and seconds, laughter and tears, happiness and sadness, brokenness and healing. These tug on me like a child tugging on his mother’s dress. It isn’t because I needed the details to get through my day but because they reminded me of who I was.Â
I wish I could forget the obscure, the kind that no one truly bothers about, I’m sure — except me. I want to toss it and watch the wind scatter them toward the denim horizon. I want to move on to whom I am today, discarding the feelings of memories and the memories of feelings.Â
There’s so much going on and so much to learn that holding on becomes too heavy, but where can I put it down? They are hardly significant and continue to claim their spaces in orbit around my mind. They remain stubbornly in me just as much as I am in them.
It matters not how much time passes or what takes place in the interim. I’m always returning. Everywhere I turn, I remember. The music, the trees, the hummingbird with her song. The fireworks explosion across the night sky. Snowflakes floating weightlessly outside my window. A beautiful sliver of sadness lingers on forever at the heart of everything. Somewhere in that forgotten time zone, there is me.
These thoughts, these unconscious triggering of memories, are still in the range of my thinking. Everything blurs into an unobstructed view behind the veil, locked on the other side in another world. One you can see but not touch. The people are gone. The laughter died down, and love dissipated. But I’m still there — the one remembering the world.
Perhaps there’s no such thing as forgetting. We leave marks along our paths and see them reflected in us as we journey forward. It reminds us that we are part of a larger story with shape and purpose. If forgetting is easy, the sum of life will become null and void. If nothing is captured and saved, then nothing matters. Life flows along a baffling occurrence — transient and ephemeral.Â
I am exhausted from the effort to forget. It is lonely remembering when no one else does. I keep remembering. Oh, how I wish I could forget. Someone once said we don’t always get what we wish for. I forgot that I keep remembering that, too.Â
♥♥♥
Thank you so much for taking the time to visit. I truly appreciate it. I hope my words make a difference and add to your beautiful life. Until next time, you can find me on Medium, Twitter, and Substack. You can support my work by buying me coffee here.
Have a Purposeful Life Now!
It is only human nature to hold on. But you are right at some point we have to learn to let go.