Emaan Irfan Week 15: Love is so short, forgetting is so long
I don’t think anyone I’ve loved has ever left my head. Not in the sense that I miss everyone I have ever met. Little things like how someone’s smile unravels when they’re embarrassed, how the light hits the stubble on a boy’s face, the petulance ringing through the black hand-me-downs in which my sister used to scream, “It’s not a phase!”
I take down the snow globes of memories lining a graveyard in my brain where love used to be. The same way I imagine my great-grandmother did. How alive she looked, twisting her hair into braids, asking me when her father would come home.
She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease a few months prior. I visited her father’s grave that evening. Sprinkling flowers on the dirt, I imagined them wither. Listening to prayers fall out of my father’s voice, I imagined them forgotten. I wondered why love is so short, and forgetting is so long.
Two years ago, I came across a film that pondered a similar thought. The lead, Joel (Jim Carrey) finds a telegram stating that his ex-girlfriend, Clementine (Kate Winslet), had erased the memory of him from her head, warning friends never to mention the relationship to her again. Joel then decides to get the procedure done himself. The rest of the movie is spent in Joel’s head as it traverses timelines and creates collapsing labyrinths out of memories, where he desperately tries to cling to her.
The two “meet” again in Montauk and realize they know each other, finding a box of tapes and memorabilia from their relationship. They realize they will never work out as a couple as they are too different and choose to get together anyway.
If you could erase someone from your memory would you do it? Is a ship still the same if you replace every part once? Is a spotless mind one worth having?
 |
| Clem and Joel in one of his collapsing memories (Source: Hollywood Reporter) |
I’ve found that our “spots” make us who we are. The scrapes, the “I’m not sure's," the “no’s", the rust-covered telephones I waited next to for hours, and the chalk-covered pavements where I cracked my head, they were all worth it. You owe yourself heartbreak and embarrassment. You owe yourself kindness, growth, and the room to make a mistake.
Hey Emaan! I like how you started of your blog! It added onto the sadness that is love. I feel that love as a whole is quite complex due to the effect that it can have on an individual. I like how you related your experience with a film! It was a creative idea to transition into another topic! I feel that the concept of erasing memories is quite dangerous. I feel that each relationship and experience that we live through allows us to be able to learn from our past and mistakes. If we were to erase those memories, then how can we be able to learn from them? From what you mentioned about the movie, they both discover that they were not compatible as a couple since they were to different yet they were only aware of this because of the box that had their memories. I still enjoy how you summarized the concept of the film in order to fit it into the memories concept that our blogs follow! Thank you for your blog!
ReplyDeleteEmaan, Emaan, Emaan. Here you are again gracing us all with your elegant prose that prompt imploring in places I never expected to. You're so right that loving is so short while forgetting is so long. I happen to think that forgetting never really happens. I don't think we can forget anything we love, the way that you don't think anyone you have ever loved has left your mind. They're there, hidden in a nook, in a cranny, boxed up, stored away. I think about the people that I have loved in my lifetime, and how much I think I have forgotten. In reality, I think when you love hard enough, you simply store away the memories that bring you pain. You may gaslight yourself, deceive yourself into thinking that you've forgotten and they're no longer apart of you or your mind or your heart in an attempt to convince yourself that that era of your life never happened. But I don't think it works. Forgetting feels like such a danger zone to me. I think about what forgetting means to me and what I have forgotten, and it honestly doesn't seem like a big deal when you forget how to solve an equation or forget the definition of a vocab word on the VFA quizzes, but that's because I never developed an attachment to them. You prompted us with a question, of whether or not we would erase someone from our minds if given the chance. While I have had my fair share of people cause me grief and pain, I don't think I would erase them. I think they made me who I am today, and if I have to live with the pain that they have caused me, at least it will serve as a reminder that they were worth loving at some point. Look at us sacrificing ourselves for the sake for another again. Perhaps you and I will never learn. I thought about what I would do if I woke up one day and my grandparents don't remember me anymore, and honestly, I don't think I'd be able to take it. But in the (heaven forbid) case that it does happen, I will blame it not on the mind, not on the heart, and not on the memory itself, but on the brain. The mind and the brain are different to me. The movie you mentioned is such an insightful reference to make because it exposes how some occurrences can drive people to want to erase that part of their lives together. I don't think we have enough life in us to lose, let alone experience and then go through the trouble of forgetting. We just move on. Amazing blog, thank you.
ReplyDelete