There are so many things I am going to try and forget, but let’s be real and honest and come to this entry today without bullshit: forgetting the events of 22 years, barring some kind of awful disease or traumatic brain injury, is not an easy thing to do.
While my short term memory is not terrific, my long term memory (while not photographic by any stretch) is more precise, and these days it is going to be precise to a fault and point to the lovely things that will cause me a pain that will dim, but never really die.
And of all the things I would like to see dead, it would be this pain and the memories that keep it alive. The pain has sent its message, I am sad as a result, and the pain can go away now. It has done its job and alerted me to the present calamity. I am in one of the deepest recesses of the borderline nightmare, where everything hurts all the time, and where nothing tastes like anything. Depression wrapped in abandonment and marinated in grief.
There is no way around this pain. There is no means to circumvent thoughts that one doesn’t like or would rather forget; that which is repressed is simply repressed, bringing no resolution to the problem and guaranteeing future calamity.
I should know. Acting like present realities were not real or certain to resolve on their own, I buried some of my deepest feelings. I couldn’t drown them in whiskey or spending, and I most certainly could not make my repressed thoughts and emotions go away through repeated fits of anger.
Nothing worked, because memories and feelings are powerful and have few formidable opponents.
The only way to work with things is through a head on collision, so buckle up for contact. And with that, here are some of the things I would very much like to bury and bury forever. Consider this post a grave, a ceremony, and an act of mourning for something that was beautiful for a time, but only a time.
I would like to forget the first time we met, at a campus Christian bible study, during my sophomore year of college and my first year at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg. If I could forget the first time I saw that smile and heard that laugh, thats would be nice.
I would like to forget the time that I half heartedly put out an invitation to come ice skating with me, only to see a figure standing by my car, after class, clearly waiting and an interested in going out for the evening. I was not very good at ice skating on this trip and was almost certainly awkward, but something stuck, and we were a couple shortly thereafter, going on our first true date on February 7th, 2003.
The date was at Destina, a movie theatre once known for its many screens, stadium seating, and expanded concession stands. Now, the theatre is as defunct as my marriage. But then it was good, and times were good, even if the popcorn was stale or the movie wasn’t very interesting. Still, these thoughts can leave my brain now and go down at least 6 feet, as that is often the law for the depth of a proper burial. In part, this is to protect the dead from predators.
Predators can have at my memories. Let them dine from limb to limb, with not a scrap wasted.
But let this funeral in my mind continue, as it has gone on long enough:
I would like to forget the hours sitting in this human’s dorm room, watching junk television like the Maury show, laughing for an hour over the over the top dramatic encounters and sagas of serial paternity tests.
I would like to forget the walks on campus, at night, hand in hand, where we’d cross the wooden bridge to go over the creek, staying on the concrete pathway as we passed under isolated lamps here and there. In these days I was sure that I would be ‘college young’ forever, and that the cool evening walks from the dorms to the volleyball courts to the lunch hall and the library would repeat in perpetuity. I would like to forget about these nights perhaps more than any other nights, because there was nothing wrong with them and the memory should feel beautiful.
Should.
College was once the happiest part of my life, and in many respects, I’d like to expunge much of it from my archive of experiences altogether.
I would like to forget the time the person whom I once loved got a job, at an amusement park, just to be with me for my open to close workdays as a ride operator. I would like to forget the times we would go out after work, with friends, to Friday’s for chicken fingers with honey mustard and beer. I would like to forget the times we would ride a wooden roller coaster after the close of park hours, just to be mischievous with friends.
I would like to forget the fact that I spent every last dime I made in the summer of 2005 on an engagement ring. I would like to forget the time I was sitting in traffic, on my way to pick this human up, a speech in my heart. As I looked at the open jewelry box in my lap, I noticed a woman in a car next to me, smiling and throwing me an enthusiastic thumbs up.
I wonder what this woman would feel like telling me now.
I wonder.
I would like to forget being on one knee during this cool October evening in the middle of a cornstalk maze, on a farm that’s now as defunct as my marriage, watching this person cry and smile and say the word I wanted to hear that day.
I would like to forget the times, the very times where I believe I was treated truly well, on my birthday. I was always made to feel like a king on my birthday, from sunrise to sundown. That was one day a year. I was not made to feel this way the other 364, and I used to long for my birthday because I knew I would feel better that day.
I would like to forget about every last one of my birthdays, and I do not care if I celebrate another, and I would rather not think on what it’s going to feel like with an empty house on a Christmas here and a Christmas there.
Halloween is better anyway.
I would like to forget the mutual friends and relatives that I will likely never associate with again in a sustained or meaningful way. The gatherings, meals, celebrations, and jokes around them are all artifacts to me now, never to be repeated again. I would sorely like to forget them. Someone stop by. Put them in a box. Take them to the thrift store, where everything smells like a thrift store.
For long stretches, I can forget many of these things. I’ve realized that I don’t have much of an internal monologue, where the thoughts come out clearly and consistently, as fully developed as if they were on paper. I have scattered feelings, emotions, and images, with a thought here and there like a piece of popcorn.
I believe I am this way because I cannot stand so much of what its in my mind. There is guilt, shame, longing, and now more loss. There are thoughts once beautiful that jeer at me, and the only way to get out of unpleasant thoughts is to shut the monologue down. Shut the dreams away. Plug the ears with noise or music or chatter.
While at Western Psychiatric Hospital, where I was at this time last year, I learned that I had long plugged the noises in my head with music; at my desk it was usually heavy metal or punk; on the inside it was the classical station, and that was fine with me. I learned that I had a talent for being able to turn on the music and initiate repetitive activities, such as walks around the halls or the use of fidget toys. When I do so, I feel as if my thoughts are nipping at the back me, and so I listen listen listen and pace pace pace. The thoughts catch up sometimes, but not as much as they’d like.
I will have favorite things again. Things that I do not want to sell or give away or throw into a bonfire.
But any thing that becomes my favorite thing, from this point forth, will be selected carefully and guarded carefully.
From now on, I will treasure that which cannot be taken away, whatever that means and however it’s possible, if it’s possible at all.
The loss of a relationship, and divorce especially, is not the loss of a relationship. It is the death of an entire way of life. In-laws suddenly become nobody. Nieces and nephews become somebody else’s children. One moment there is a life and people and relationships, and the next moment it is either all gone, or so severely altered that it is functionally gone.
Nothing of the original life, as it was, remains.
Except for one thing, or should I say, one large collection of things: memories that feel like nothing more than something that was never meant to be.
My memories are for sale, free of charge. I don’t want them anymore.
Yours Mentally,
Nathan
Nathan, I'm so sorry you're going through this!
This is so incredibly raw, as you go through all of the moments you wish you could forget. I felt the pain of having to leave behind those you once loved. I am glad that you are looking at what new moments you can make. I really do understand this process of re-finding ourselves. This is a great write.