Throughout life, humans have certain drives and motivation for what they do in their everyday routine. Most individuals attempt to act an assured way or talk in a way that people will remember them for. This can be the case for either short term remembrance or long term. In the grand scheme of things, people want to be remembered for something great after they have passed on. However, others want their name to be remembered in infamy. Either way, people have a natural drive to do something, good or bad, in order to be remembered. When I pass on, whether it is in many years or a few years, I would like to be remembered for more than my mistakes. I would like to be remembered as more than just another person in this infinite world. I would like to be remembered as who I actually am, and not what others make me out to be.
As a human, I make just as many mistakes as the next person; it is in our nature to do so. The point at which the nature of mistakes changes, is the ability of someone to admit they have made them. And I can surely admit that I have made plenty of mistakes in my lifetime, some that happened long ago and that I am still paying for. I am still remembered by people as the girl who made another girl cry in middle school. I knew exactly what I was doing, but looking back, I truly know I made a mistake. As a kid, you’re bound to do stupid things that you’ll be reminded of and feel embarrassed. However, I do not want people to remember me as the dumb kid that I once was. The mistakes I made then, do not define me as who I am right now. If anything, it has changed me. I am no longer defined by just my mistakes. I would hope people would see past that and remember me as the person who learned from her mistakes and changed as a person.
I also feel that when I pass on, I want to be remembered as more than just another body that walked the earth. This is hard to accomplish, as there are 7 billion other humans walking the earth attempting to be remembered for something unique. I do not want everyone to remember my name; everyone is a vague term and it is impossible for “everyone” to remember a single soul. However, within the hundreds of people who know my name as of now, and the hundreds more I will meet, I want those to be the ones who will remember me when my time is up and I leave this earth. I want them to remember me as more than just another passerby, or just another person they smile at in the hallway, or just another person they follow on social media. I want to be remembered as someone, to whoever these individuals may be, they looked up to, someone they genuinely enjoyed having around. To be remembered for the little things that people truly enjoyed about me and know that I will be remembered about the good I did in their lives is all I really want.
Even more so, I want to be remembered as the person I actually am and not what others assume me to be. I hear the things people whisper behind my backs and I see the glares I get from others. Some see me as the stuck up girl who trudges down the hallway with a blank stare, and they assume that I am a spiteful person. I am labeled as someone who has no feelings and has no care about anything or anyone. I guess I never understood why, but that is not who I am; that is not what I want people to remember me as. I know that “actions speak louder than words” and that’s why people assume my stone cold glares and soft spoken nature make me a rude person, but I am not what my actions show. I want people to remember me as the person who will smile as soon as someone comes up to me. And I want to be remembered as the person who made others feel emotions they’ve never felt before, the emotions that seem impossible to attain because they are so special. I’m not the most wonderful and pure person to live, but I am not the worst, and I want the people who know me to remember the parts of me that will be engraved in them forever. I want my friends to remember me as the person they went to for advice and a shoulder to cry on when no one else was available. I want my family to remember me as the person who they enjoyed listening to at Christmas dinner and the ambitious girl who always had dreams and attempted to turn them into reality. I want my boyfriend or husband, whatever I have when I pass on, to remember the love we shared together and how I helped them grow as a person emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. I want those who are my acquaintances or those who only know of me to remember me as a friendly person who always put everyone else’s needs before my own.
It is difficult to explain what exactly I want to be remembered for without being selfish because, of course, I want to be remember for the good over the bad; most people do. In general, I just want to be remembered in a positive light by those who mattered most to me. If someone can’t seem to think of me in that way and only see the negative then I want them to forget about me. If I cannot be remembered by everyone, then I only want to be remembered by the ones who I love and will never forget. My biggest fear is to be forgotten by the people who were important to me. I hope they can remember me as I want to be remembered.
