Deleting Past

...
"But each day brings its petty dust
Our soon-chok'd souls to fill,
And we forget because we must,
And not because we will."
...
Matthew Arnold
(from "Absence")


This writing is inspired by memory. A not so pleasant one, though. 

Something in my life just turned sour. Like a food we kept too long, even in the frige, low temperature couldn't help but make it go bad. And how do you know? First, you feel it. You feel it, that it has been there too long, and you know it. Then you smell it. If you have the courage to put it in your mouth, you have a confirmation. It tastes funny. When that happens, the next thing you have to do is to put it in a plastic (better a degradable one)  then throw it with the rest of the junk.

Now that something in my life, which I have kept a little too long, and finally gone bad, is called memory. 

Memory, for a lot of us is a mental faculty. It's brain's work, say experts. Is it really true? Then how come we sometimes say it's so hard to wipe a certain memory? If it's only the brain who is responsible for creating, retaining, and recalling it, then why should it be so difficult to erase it?

Years ago, something happened and left a deep impression on me. The memory was like a big, red, scar, that, as other "real" scars in my life, didn't come off easily. Out of curiosity, I began to read books and articles about memory, and I came to know this fact. 

For those of you who find it difficult to forget a particular incident in life, this is the reason. When you experience something, the memory of it isn't just stored in your brain, but in your entire body. That includes your organs even to tiny little particles in your body such as your skin surface and hair shaft. Thus, even if your brain stops working, the other organs will still hold some certain memories, although we no longer remember them consciously. I suppose, I can draw a conclusion that, theoretically, when someone's brain is transplanted into another skull, then the organs will remind the brain about certain things they have gone through.  (Anyway, it's very complicated and I can tell you stories which prove this theory, but it will be a long and this isn't what I want to write about, actually. So, send me an e-mail if you're curious.) So all I'm saying is, it's not easy at times to wipe a memory because even if your brain wants to forget, your heart, or your kidney, may not want to do so. 

Now back to the main topic: dumping memory. No matter how hard it is, some memory needs to be sent to recycle bin because it relates to pain and its no longer productive. Because it's depriving you from happiness, and because when you think about it, you feel like seeing an old pair of jeans which reminds you of how slim you used to be, but honestly, there's no way you're going to fit in them again. And this certain memory that I want to put behind doesn't exactly make me think of that one fine day. Instead, it always hit me right in the solar plexus, leaving a taste of phantom pain afterward. It scared me a lot. And I hate being scared, especially because of something that has happened.  It's stupid, and useless. 

But since there are so much element connected to a memory, deleting one usually means deconnecting other things related to it, and that can include a name, a person, a thing, and series of unfortunate events. It can be quite a brutal thing to do, and when it comes to people, it could terminate a whole relationship altogether. That's the sacrifice one must make, I think, in order to erase an unpleasant memory. 

I have a confession to make. I write this blog, to explain to a certain person, why I do what I did. It's actually simple. I have decided not to recall this memory again, and in doing that, I consequently stop recalling him to my life. I'm simply doing this to protect myself. I want to liberate myself from pain, and if he's pained with what I do, I hope he can understand. The best thing he can do, is following my footsteps. And that would be deleting my memory from his life.