I Wish I Could Remember The Things We Left Behind

I wish I could remember things nowadays. Well, certain things: the little things I loved to recall even if that day itself forgot its own history.

I say so because I used to remember everything. Well, everything aside from tasks and appointments. 

But birthdays and colors and people and quotes and shirts and pants and moments and seconds and years and befores and afters and laughter and tears and happiness and sadness and broken and open and family and friends and foes and familiar and similar and far and wide and close and intimate. 

I wish I could remember things nowadays, and it’s not actually because I need to know them for everyday life but because I need to know them for everyday me. 

I have always taken pride in remembering the obscure things. The little things that I always thought to be big. The feelings and memories and feelings of memories and memories of feelings. 

The reason this bothers me so much is not because of the people or things that are the subject of what I remember—most don’t realize they’re remembered and even many times they don’t remember what I seem to—the reason it bothers me so much is because who I am is inside those things. 

Who I am is outside them but still gazing in. Inside them but still arms wrapped around tight. Brushing their hair and saying goodnight. Waving good morning and seeing them later. Loving them wholly and loving them holy. Acknowledging their importance and reminding Time of their history. 

Stuck inside that time is the me I was when I could remember them. I don’t remember how to navigate them anymore. I don’t look at the date and say this is what happened or happy birthday to or remember when this or that and that too. This sometimes silly skill but strength I held was always one I took pride in. A skill many didn’t care for but didn’t need to in order for me to celebrate them. But now we’ve lost touch, or rather, they have been unfairly alienated from their only advocate, their own voice: me. 

Illness and medications half mental and half physical: they’ve altered my life, my mind, my memory, my body. They have altered the altar I didn’t realize I prayed at. 

Memory has always been my religion and, despite how much I fucking try to get back to it, no matter how many prayers I say on my knees, how many questions I ask and even think I answer: what’s become of me isn’t actually me at all. 

The only true thing I remember is what I wish I could and it’s the fact that I am no longer. I am in that past. That’s the one memory that I do recall: that who I’m trying to be is a me I lost. 

Who I wish to be, it’s a me that’s not me at all, not anymore. It’s a me I keep forgetting to forget. A me I can’t be. So, with the same wish to remember how to remember all those little things: I wish, and fail, to grasp that I cannot grasp that girl, the one remembering the world.

I wish I could remember things nowadays. But we can’t always get what we wish for—I keep forgetting that, too.