Just Don't Forget

4/27/2021

I write a lot. Partly because my dad has terrified me into believing that I'm going to lose my memory when I get older. Dementia runs in my family and it might be my biggest fear. Growing old and forgetting all the people I once adored and all the exciting things I did when I was younger seems like the worst thing that could happen.

I realized pretty early on that writing down narratives from my life seems like the best way to avoid forgetting these moments. So now I have notebooks upon notebooks filled with recollections of my happiest days, echoes of heartbreak, secrets told, clandestine souvenirs of moments shared, every moment the tiniest bit significant is written down somewhere. I even have a notebook filled with letters written to every person I've met in the past two years whose had any sort of impact on me. I'm not trying to make writing in a journal sound original or anything, but I do think it's a valuable thing that more people should do.

I think that life is too good to forget. I don't want to forget what my boyfriend said

to me when I was 17 that gave me butterflies every time I thought about it for two weeks after the fact, or what my best friend wrote in a letter for my 15th birthday that made me realize that she needed me as much as I needed her, or what the boy in my 8th grade class said that made me laugh so hard I peed my pants in front of everyone. It's the little things, really. Because they are monumental even if they seem insignificant in time.

If I'd never kept track of these mementos, of what the kid I spent the rest of the day thinking about it, or what the boy I convinced myself I was in love with said to me the last time we ever called each other on the phone, or what my old best friend said to me as we laid on the grey carpet of her room, more honest than ever, I wouldn't remember them. Obviously.

But these things are so important to shaping who I have become, that I couldn't be more grateful

that they were recorded. Because now I realize that there's a reason I stopped hating the stupid sound my car makes when I go to start it, and it has to do with what the boy who I met a single time said when he got in the passenger seat of it, and there's a reason I'm scared of falling in love and it has to do with that last phone call, and there's a reason I have learned to be as honest and vulnerable with people as I am today, and it has to do with the intoxicated words we said not knowing our time together was running out.

All things that I had forgot about until I reread my old journals a few years later. Putting the pieces together on things that seem to look so unimportant gave me a whole new perspective on why things are the way that they are. I realized things I probably never would have had they not been recorded by younger versions of myself. Silly little moments written down because they made me smile or hurt my heart. Some moments so raw I can look back and almost feel the emotion from when I originally wrote it. Anyways, I started this blog to record more silly little insignificant moments from my life. Save some paper ya know. Because I have a lot to say about things. Always. Welcome to the highlight reel of my life.