someday you’ll come back to this.
You take for granted waking up. Going to school, talking to your friends. Watching a show on television or reading a book or going out to lunch.
You take for granted going to sleep at night, waking up the next day and remembering everything that happened to you before you closed your eyes.
We take it for granted.
We forget stuff along the way, sure, but mostly it’s little stuff. We forget where we put our keys or we forget to turn the curling iron off or we lie awake in bed in the middle of the night convinced we left the stove on. Convinced we left the front door unlocked. Convinced we forgot to set the alarm.
And as we grow up we accept that our memory gets worse. Sometimes we can’t remember what day it is. Sometimes we can’t remember if we washed our hair already. We stand in the shower dripping, unmoving.
We forget to put deodorant on.
We forget our sunglasses on the kitchen counter.
We run out of the house without our car keys. Without our purse.
Older still and now names go. We cannot remember our children’s names. We call them every name we can think of until we get to the right one. We know we’re right because of the expression on their faces.
We put our blouse on backwards.
Maybe we wear two different socks. Two different shoes.
We get into the car and we forget where we’re going or we remember where we’re going and we forget how to get there.
And then one day maybe we forget everything altogether. We forget how old we are and we forget our names and we forget when to eat and when to sleep and we lose weight and we get big circles under our eyes.
This kind of forgetting, this is almost OK.
Because it is expected.
But when you are young. When you are my age. You take it for granted.
You get up. You have your day. You go to sleep.
You remember everything you did.
This is normal.
We remember.
We live and we remember.
You live and you remember.
But me.
Me, I live and I forget.
Except now.
Now I am remembering.
And I’m not sure what I liked better.
Being in the dark or being thrust, unceremoniously, into the light.
