It's past 3am and I can't sleep. I can hear the birds of dawn singing outside my window, their endless twittering now drowning in Beethoven's 7th symphony going crescendo.
I watched The Butterfly Effect earlier on TV. I remember going to the cinema to watch it a few years back when it first came out, and it was nice to watch it again and refresh my memory... Memory... what a funny creature, memory.
After I watched that movie, I went to bed but started crying again. Turning and tossing endlessly, I remembered my own teenage diaries written in little notebooks in the same way the hero of the movie is depicted doing/reading back. I got out of bed, switched on the light again and started rummaging in my drawers to try and find my own stack. When I finally got my hands on them, there was a fine layer of dust covering them.
I slipped back under the covers of my bed and started reading the first diary I started to keep (where there's actually more than a random line or two written by the child I once was) when I was around 12 years-old. I wasn't very good then. I kept mentioning the most trivial things, but there were some glimmers of deeper thoughts hidden here and there. The first entry starts with disappointment at the thought that moments just go to fast, and that most of us don't seem to appreciate them as we live them. Then I move on abruptly to mention that a friend has failed to call me to go ice skating. Each entry ends with the exact time, including seconds. I used to think if I made sure to record the exact time every time, it would help somehow to immortalise the moments recorded in writing.
As I flicked through the pages I start to notice that some pages have been ripped and I know I was the one who ripped them out, but I'll never remember why. All my years throughout high school are recorded vaguely in that diary, with lists of people I ended up in class with as I moved up a year. There are scribblings next to certain names, others are simply crossed out depending on who was my friend or not. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. In fact, the more I read, the more I felt surprised at how mainstream I could sound at times... oh, and so dramatic. Every little thing felt like the end of the world.
Then at some point I got up to get a glass of water and as I put down the diary, pieces of paper that were tucked between pages fell on my lap. I remembered them at once. Most of them were little notes I used to exchange with a girl in one of my most boring classes. We were 14. In one of them she wrote:
"My dear Aliska, I'm sorry I was mean to you earlier but you need to at least understand me if you can't find it in you to forgive me. I'm going through the worst teenage crisis of the century. I say and think things that are completely insane. Why am I telling you? I have no idea. Perhaps because you are the craziest girl I know, but not in a mean way. .."
It felt strange to read this back knowing that this very girl who wrote me that note all these years ago is now settled down, married with kids on the way. I did stare at the mention that the reason she wrote me this was 'perhaps' because I was the craziest girl she knew. It's not the first time that people will feel the need to use that word as one of the reasons they like me. Either that word, or that I'm 'so' weird.
I also read about a time when I went to a friend's house for a sleepover, which is news to me today - I have no recollection of it whatsoever. I don't know if the lack of memory worked to make it funnier as I read that passage. I was writing how me and that girl (we were both 13 then) didn't feel like sleeping, but another friend also staying over was already fast asleep. We decided to play monopoly, but couldn't keep the light on, so I told her to put a sock over the light bulb of the bedside lamp. Yeah... Then I wrote how I suddenly noticed a faint burning smell, and then smoke coming out of the sock... We retrieved it in time, but as it cooled down and I lifted it, it just dissolved into black crumbs.
I'm writing all this because as I read these glimpses, I realised that those I didn't recall are now alien to me. And that led me to think about memories in general. No matter the medium we use (be it writing, pictures or movies) memories are like water slipping away between your fingers... and they can never be trusted. The more time passes, the less they can be relied on. And not even trying to record them can prevent it, or the fact that the mind will alter everything about them as time goes on.
That sock 'memory' may have happened, but I may as well have read it from someone else. The effect would have been the same: it is as though it never happened to me because I have no recollection of it today. Each mind will remember a certain thing, a certain angle, a certain detail, and these will always differ slightly from one person to another even though they may have all be present during a same event. Some people will remember a certain occurrence while others will never have paid the same attention.
There was a time when I thought, perhaps naively, that I could try and record as much as I could in writing to 'capture' myself in its completeness, you see. I now realise more fully that it can never happen. The mind selects what it wants to remember, and then tampers with it so much as time goes on that what you're left with to 'remember' is nothing more than a twisted shadow.
Feeling sleepy now... It's just gone past 4am. I want to continue thinking about this, but my eyes won't let me.
No comments:
Post a Comment