It Is and Was and Is My Birthday

”Your birthday — such a great time for reflection!”

Spent the most of my weekend driving, heading to visit family & friends & my mannssss for this sweet lil birthday of mine. For 300 miles and 300 miles back, I had the luxury of quiet, solitary reflection. I love getting time in my head.

It feels like I remember everything yet recall almost nothing. Everything is constantly occurring & happening in my mind, all that I have experienced overlapping and never giving me a dam break haha ! I usually don’t mind. I often find myself grasping on and trying so hard to keep it from slipping when a memory decides to intrude. I hate to forget ! but I ache when I remember.

I am a hoarder the way I grasp and grasp and greedily hold onto things that should b mine no longer — I’ve forgotten so much, but I remember just as much.

Sometimes a moment barges in so loudly, so intensely, that it startles me. Sometimes it is something I was sure I must have forgotten. Sometimes, it is a moment I frequently find myself revisiting.

With these revisits, I discovered a sort, like, way I could hold onto very specific moments and keep it ina room I can go back to whenever I please. I don’t think it is healthy, tho ! And worry not, it is something I seldom do anymore :P it’s like I could get genuinely lost into a memory, as if it is the now and not something from the past. I think this discovery was borne from discontent for the present,.

I yearn and I ache and I forget to eat what’s in front off me, and I do it over once it’s gone.

There’s kind of a meme regarding being sad on your birthday. ‘Meme’ as in it is talked abt in such a light hearted way, something to goof & gaff about. I think I have grown enough that birthdays are joyous once again. My first sad birthday that I remember, I turned 9. My grandfather died about a week prior. It felt to b a selfish thing, to celebrate. From then, my following birthdays oscillated from sad to exciting to exhausting to anxiety-inducing.

”I don’t think I am supposed to b this sorrowful so often :( It’s like it is always there, threatening to spill out. I forget abt it, bc it’s so ever present. I ache for things that were never even mine.”

I am constantly navigating my relationship w memory & the past. As is everyone, I suppose. It feels detrimental to me though, more often than I think it should.

“I latch and latch, not letting go when I probably should.”

I have always had a difficult relationship with memory. My entire life, from the first things I can recall, I remember a feeling of dread about forgetting the past. I think I can pinpoint exactly what trauma caused this type of relationship LAMOOO  but that is a topic fo l8r, perhaps something a bit too personal to divulge anyways. To say: as far back as my memories go, my fear of forgetting has always existed.

”Ima hoarder who hates to forget. Like, forgetting is genuinely scary, heartbreaking to me. It feels like a fog or mist that envelopes, then disappears leaving absolutely nothing in its wake, not even drops. Like nothing was there to begin with.”

Now, I journal. Haha and blog I guess ! I keep mementos of the most random shit bc it is tied to this that or the other. Clothes even, hard to depart with. Things that are ripped and torn and broken and chipped, (tho I have always had a scarcity mindset even before the birth of the anti-consumerist in me jajaja) I fix and stitch and glue so I don’t have to throw it away. Bc anything and everything can flicker reminiscence.

”I rlly do remember so much .. like my brian wont let me forget. I catch a glimpse, and it’s like its fresh. Well no, not fresh, but like something stale and dusty has been reminded it still exists. How it feels to blink away a dream, but in reverse. Hm.”

It is important to me try to enjoy things as they are. It is something I strive for, bc I feel I have already lost so much of the present to the past. It hurts ! It is sickening. Upsetting :( It is something I unfortunately have to actively strive for.

”I missed it while I was there.”

But I persist ! 

The way the lights moved acrosst the escalator this morning caught my eye. This cold hummus w rice is tastey. I am listening to a new album I had not heard before today. My coffee drink is kinda grainy, gritty. I sit here and look out a window onto a busy busy street. So much business casual haha ! Boots and heels and loafers and those ugly ass big honking shoes men wear. It is also chilly.