I am pretty ruthless when it comes to blocking people, and I might be too good sometimes at forgetting my past.
There are moments when I am literally worried whether my brain doesn’t deteriorate slowly, reflecting on how much I had to move on from and how well I managed to do that.
Is forgetting always a good thing? Is it necessary to become happy again? I think the answer is mostly yes, but do I mourn the person I used to be?
Probably more often than I care to admit.
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I have been struggling lately to reach out to people from my past who do not know what my life is like now.
It is so different from what it used to be and so different from what I or maybe even they expected.
I made peace with it, but I suppose I might find it challenging to digest others’ expectations.
The person I used to be when they knew me – she is almost hard to comprehend for me today.
I remember one time when I had a period of having only full As/basically 100% in every single test in uni, and I was studying and revising like a robot.
I didn’t get 100% on one exam, so I spoke with the professor to dispute my grade.
I told her to ask me anything from the material. I knew I was able to write down every drug production process she wanted me to, and I indeed did that and got the highest grade and the satisfaction I clearly craved.
Now, I don’t remember the exact name of the course or the professor, and I am not even bothered to check that.
I also sometimes think about another time when I looked at loving messages I had sent to my ex-partner a few years prior.
The language I had used, the sincere longing it exuded, and the desperation to reunite with him seemed so foreign and almost uncomfortable to look at.
I didn’t remember at all the mood I was in or the problems we were going through that I had referred to.
Every word tasted like longing and desire; these words still exist while we have become strangers.
I don’t remember anything from it. It is hard even to call them a reminder of the past, as I cannot relate emotionally to the girl in love I used to be.
These are not just memories. These are experiences of a living, breathing woman I lost somehow along the way.
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But that is the beginning of a new story—the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world into another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.
Crime and Punishement, Fyodor Dostoevsky
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I recently realised that someone from my past, an old ex-friend, has blocked me on social media. It had to be done in the last couple of months, even though we haven’t spoken in over a year. I haven’t even looked in his direction in months; our lives have hardly collided. Somehow, something about me bothered him so much that he had to wipe me off from his reality thoroughly. It might have been my punctuation.
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As I only enjoy real art, I despise Taylor Swift, but I love me some Ariana Grande.
I seriously like her relationship dramas, super-tuned face and mindblowing voice.
Don’t judge me; everyone has their own thing, and I have many of them.
She recently released a music video referencing the movie ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’.
I finally watched it a few weeks ago, and it inspired me to write this post.
In ‘Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind’, three characters fall in love again with their ex-partners despite their memories being wiped off by some mysterious medical technology they have available in the world of this film.
One is a young girl who has a deep crush on her boss, who probably manipulated her previously (pre-memory cancellation) to go through the procedure to help him rebuild his peaceful life with his wife and make her forget about their unfortunate affair.
The other two are an erratic couple who break up and wipe off the memories of each other to get rid of the pain and move on.
Do I find this believable? I honestly don’t think so. Timing, place, and mindset play a major role in infatuation, even if the other person seems objectively perfect for you.
I can think of one recent example in my life: when I met a person last year and did not pay any attention to them. I met them again a few months ago, and they occupied my mind, at least for some time.
For what reason exactly, this time? Who the hell knows?
I was probably thinking about someone else, maybe more than one person back then. Since then, I have managed to forget all about them.
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I recently talked with a friend about the sad fact that there are few audiobooks in English with full-cast narration, which is much more popular in Polish.
As I missed listening to those, I downloaded a Polish equivalent of Audible and stumbled upon a dramatised audiobook for ‘Crime and Punishment’.
It is absolutely brilliant, the cast is very talented, and I think that the fact that it is in Polish adds to its Eastern European grimness.
Everyone knows the story. A guy kills a loan shark and feels tormented by the memory of his crime. A brilliant detective makes him confess, and the guy is sent to Siberia because where else?
The book is 160 years old, so I don’t think this requires a spoiler alert.
I haven’t read this book since high school. I am sure I went through a phase of calling it my favourite novel ever.
I was surprised now by how little I remembered from it and how much I managed to forget.
It is a story that moves your soul, shapes you, and changes how you look at the world and perceive other people’s feelings.
I forgot how many little background tragedies there are while the main plot moves forward.
On almost every page, there is a child neglected, a young girl sexually abused, or a prostitute longing for a better life.
Read why Marmeladov drinks, why he ruins his family’s life, how his choices led to his daughter choosing to become a sex worker, and how his wife beats him and try not to cry.
I knew this story; I forgot this somehow and wept again over his fictional fate.
If the stories you read contribute to who you become, what happens when they evaporate from your memory?
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But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.”
Isaiah 49:14–15
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Soon, I will be going to Poland again, in about a week’s time. I used to go there so often in a different life, being a different person.
There are things back home that I would like to change and improve, as I think losing the connection with my roots is a tragedy I don’t want to let happen.
I am still so very Polish, so very shaped by my upbringing and culture. I will never forget it; it is engraved deep into my bones and heard in every word I utter, if you only listen.
All of my insecurities and strengths emerged back then, and I won’t give myself permission to forget that.
As painful as looking back at my past is, at what I had to go through – it is the core of my soul, and without it, I would become a shell of the person I was.
There are things too precious to forget, even if they are not always considered good.
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forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue
or even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
