I’ve found that memory tampers with change, and in the most bittersweet of ways, our favorite moments can induce the most pain. The same memories that make us feel alive and vibrant within, and seem to clothe our core with warm nostalgia, are the very ones that make us feel alone and empty, stripping us down to our bare souls, keeping us up at night as we desperately search for ways to revive them. And as we cling onto these moments tightly with both hands, we resist the waves of change and push back upon them like a sails against the wind.
It’s difficult to deal with the mind -- to deal with memory, and to deal with change. The two forces combined create a dissonance between what we know to be real and what we remember and often wish to be true. We hold onto the sweetest moments, letting every minute linger, soak and seep deeply into our subconscious, and as a result, we create expectations for events that have yet to occur. We expect nights in which we lay on top of cars, backs against the windshield, and look up at the stars suspended above as they speckle the sky. We expect long summer days and cold, dew-filled mornings spent outdoors as a means to satisfy our cravings for a childhood long past. We come to expect moments just as sweet, words just as kind and actions just as caring from those who surround us. We expect moments that only lead to stifled laughter and ones that make your heart race and pulse quicken
Our minds seem to operate like highlight reels, creating pockets of nostalgia within themselves -- pockets filled to the brim with awkward, yet endearing, first dates and sentimental high school graduations and tearful goodbyes and boys and girls who made us feel like we were enough. And that’s why it’s so hard to let go. We ruminate on and replay our favorite moments, until eventually that’s all we see and all we can recall, and we cling onto them like crutches in an attempt to support a life we once lived, in hope that some day we can create a more expansive library of memories in a certain place, in a certain time or with a certain person. But that isn’t life. Life, as complex and daunting as it may seem, is about the moments in between-it’s just as much the valleys as it is the peaks and the flatlands that sprawl, connecting the two.
We must learn to let these moments exist in the past instead of materializing them as a current reality. We must allow ourselves to set them adrift in the back of our minds in order to create room for new experiences to nuzzle their way into the spaces left behind. Sometimes, this process of release can feel empty and can create a void in the mind and in the heart, but I’ve learned that empty spaces epitomize the inception of growth, and are intended to be filled with new bits and pieces of life. And the more I’ve pondered the concept of life and experience itself, I’ve come to realize and find comfort in the fact that memories are just segments of life, suspended in time, caught in a type of purgatory -- never changing, but always constant. Always tucked away in the corner of your mind; always there to be saved for a rainy day.
