Every once in a while, more often than we want, we recall a memory. For good or worse somehow certain things stay with us. Usually just the big picture but once in a while it is a small detail that really pulls the memory together. Maybe it is the scent that reminds you of someone who once was loved and now is lost. Maybe you remember an intense feeling associated with an outfit that you wore. Perhaps that was the first day of a new school.
Most things that happen in our life, a decade later, become nothing worth remembering. Certain things may seem like a lifetime ago and all at once like yesterday. What makes us remember things or not is a mystery, most having to do with the assimilation of senses and emotions. The most intriguing part to me is the bleeding lines of memories. Memories that you recall for a moment and you know as clear as day what happened and what that moment meant to you but you just can’t place the time period.
A bleeding memory is the epitome of mysteries. You can spend hours contemplating was that before or after that thing happened and changed my world. It’s amazing how I can remember being two years old in a pink onesie carrying a milk bottle but I can’t remember if it was before or after my brother was born. I don’t even remember that happening other than the pictures and videos I have watched. Why do I remember something as ridiculous as wearing a onesie and carrying around a pink bottle of milk. Pink. Amazing how I hated this color so much by the age of 12. Perhaps painting my bedroom pink and getting everything and anything in it became the nauseating thing. Wonder if my breaking point was the pink pepto bismol I had to ingest to get rid of an excruciating earache.
Yes, that’s right. I can remember all the pink horridness but I can’t even remember riding a bike for the first time, most of the years that my parents were together, or saying goodbye to everyone I love in the north. However I do remember the blurry months of devastation that went on for years as I tried to cope with being alone versus being surrounded by family.
Memories. They just seep in sometimes, take over you emotionally, and then you’re like….wait when did that happen. Twenty seven years later and I can truthfully say that I remember less and less about the decade before as time goes on. I wonder if one day I will have trouble differentiating my elementary days with those of teenage angst. Only time will tell.
Writer Daze 