Let Your Heart Play

Memory is a cruel and fickle thing. It locks away your most prized-possessions, but despite their importance, their meaning, their affirmations, your mind manages to alter them. It loses bits of information here and there. Mends the gaps with things that may or may not be accurate. Your brain fills it all in, a little at a time until, is that really what happened? How much of what you remember was a reality? The moment is always a detailed, vivid masterpiece. Your memory is little more than vague outlines and smudges of color.

I, myself, have an exceptionally poor memory. Dates and events and details elude me. I've struggled for the entirety of my life to remember my father's birthday, and I still couldn't tell you--with any amount of confidence--what it is if you asked me right now (is it February 16th? Or 18th? Definitely not the 12th, right? It's some even number of days before or after Valentine's Day. Or is it odd?). It's not for a lack of caring, as I love my father to the Moon and back, but I just can't make myself remember. I can't help it. Maybe I need more Omega-3s in my life. Who knows?

That all being said, are you ready for me to get even more sad and deep on ya? Cause I'm gonna.

Let's talk about Jordan. Jordan was my first love, and my boyfriend of nearly six years when he was killed by a reckless drunk driver (that's the express version of the story, anyhow). And one of the first things I remember being overwhelmingly concerned about after his death were the memories. I remember sobbing to my therapist (the one and only time I went, actually) that I was panic-strickenly terrified that I wouldn't remember him someday. Not to the extent that I would forget he existed, since I'd only be able to manage that feat with full-on amnesia, but that I would forget all of the little things. His voice. His laugh. The weight of his hand in mine. The way my lips felt pressed against his. The pressure of his hug (did he always have his arms on top, or did I; or did we do that weird side-ways hug sometimes?). Inside jokes. Just how blue his eyes were. The way it felt to hear him say, "I love you."

I feel like I'm getting to the point where Jordy is starting to feel like a distant, foggy dream and it honestly scares the hell out of me. What do I have to show for his life? For our life together? Some trinkets, some of his clothes, and my [faulty] memories. Memories that become less crisp by the day. I remember I used to lay in bed at night, safely snuggled into the crook of his arm, and just watch him. I would try to memorize the curves of his silhouetted face, the pace of his heartbeat, the sound his breath, the way he smelled (Oh, and if you don't think I don't know how creepy that sounds, you're wrong. I do. Supes creepy). I guess it was a comfort, though. I used to think that I did it so often that I could probably draw his face with my eyes closed. I thought that I did it so often that I'd never be able to forget, not even the tiniest freckle. But I was wrong. And now I can't remember if he even had any freckles, or where they might have been, or how many. I know that might seem like something really insignificant and small, but every little piece of him that falls out of my head like that is devastating. A little more of him fades. A little more of him dies, a little more of me dies.

So, in the spirit of being super depressed about this fact for the past few days, I decided to post some of these little strips of paper. For one of our anniversaries (or Valentine's Day, or his birthday, or something, probably; see how bad it is?!), I cut a whole bunch of tiny little strips of paper and wrote things on them, individually replaced the strips you find in Kisses candies with them, packaged 'em up real nice like, and handed them over to my boy. Merry Freakin' Whatever Celebratory Event It Was, baby! I initially wanted to make three-hundred-and-sixty-five of them, so he would have one each day for a year, but decided halfway through to fuck that plan (I couldn't come up with that many, and it was really hard to write on all those itty-bitty things, and you probably shouldn't keep candy sitting around for a year before eating it anyway, right?).  He must have been impressed because he saved all of the strips of paper that I wrote on and kept them in a little Altoid tin that I painted on for him. And thank goodness he did because I read through them last night (sobbing hysterically after each one) and found myself remembering so many things that I have already forgotten. So, anywho, I'm hoping that by posting them, it'll help me remember him a little better, remember why I wrote some of these things, and why they were important at the time. I'm going to post more over time, but this is a good start, I think. This is a good start.