i remember everything (it's ruining my life)

a love letter to tender observers

You’re telling me a story about your annoying coworker. You’re dramatic and letting off steam, I’m here for it. Little do you know you already told me all about it a few weeks ago. Initially presuming it was a different story, I soon realize it’s eerily identical to what you made known last time. Oh, so you just genuinely forgot we’d already discussed this. Must be nice, I’m thinking, to have so many people and encounters and small talk with strangers in your life that you can’t recall who’s gotten the latest drama du jour and who’s yet to hear it. I want to be polite but I’m also of a selfish caliber, so I stop you mid-sentence:

“Actually, you’ve told me this before. I remember that.”

Your expression changes: the corners of your mouth crystallize into a confused frown as it washes away the enthusiasm of what you thought was going to be a tale of novelty.

“Have I?”

“Yes.”

No one’s fault. Big deal. This happens all the time. Observation is a sport, perhaps the only one I’ve ever excelled at. I was genetically blessed —or cursed—with my memory sharp as a blade. Bottomless backlog of everything that has occurred and each one of the consequences that followed suit; one layer sticking on top of another, forming a sugary, gooey substance that coats my consciousness as it flows through my neural pathways. An overwhelming accumulation. It’s a cognitive pushback, and simultaneously my favorite party trick. I didn’t choose this, it’s just how things go — I’m never striving to remember more, I just don’t know what it’s like not to remember. If you ever suffer temporary memory loss, I should be the one you speed-dial: I remember everything you’ve told me. I remember things you never told me, too. If you’re careless, I’m cautious. If you’re speaking in grandiose terms, I’m taking tiny notes in cursive. You spill the wine, I clean it up. You’re talking, I’m listening. It’s like we’re at the beach, I’m walking behind you, picking up seashells you keep dropping along the way and shoving them into my pockets one by one. When you need that little starfish back, I got you — don’t have to tell me twice.

Situations, people, places, smells, sensations. Conversations, glances, notes. Liquor, lyrics, lies. Taste, touch, truth. Birthdays, ages, anniversaries. Engraved onto my retina, my eardrums, or my tongue, overheard in a crowded room, choked up in the back of a cab, confessed in the hallway or unzipped in the bathroom of a hotel bar, spelled out on bylines or uttered in vain. Everything that occurs in this time-space reality goes straight into my head and never goes out. Nostalgia and romanticization of certain phases and patches that were probably not as special or significant as I like to recall them? Guilty as charged. Always having something to look back on, no matter how flimsy, weird, or unpleasant? Also true. It’s truly boundless out here, defying spatial laws one by one. Encoded, embedded, forever embossed.

Reuniting for a drink with somebody. We’re not friends or lovers, more occasional cameos in each other’s lives. It’s a Wednesday special. Talking about life and, of course, about us. Something is off: he says the breakfast we got the next morning was excellent. Excuse me? I shake my head and go we never got breakfast. Because we didn’t — I left early, it was raining and I had a big itinerary that day. It was some other girl he’s trying to recall. All good and fair and I’m not keeping score but, come on, why don’t you remember? J'espère my presence is anything but insignificant. I’m not ‘one of many’ — I’m an individual, and you’ve just made me feel so tarnished and unspecial. Am I indistinguishable from every other brunette that comes in and out of your apartment? Why is it my brain that has to do the heavy lifting of tenderly observing and retaining? What a stupid one-way street. I don’t even care for you in a way I would for a lover, and yet I remember your siblings’ names, the work-in-progress title of that pretentious documentary you’re working on, and the sound your shoes make on the pavement. Asshole.

I refuse to forget an encounter. Platonic, romantic, idiotic — of any kind. The loss would be insurmountable to me, so I make sure the chances of losing track of things are as close to zero as possible. Everything we were lucky to experience together, your awareness dancing with my awareness in a waltz, is of equal importance. It doesn’t matter if I knew you for 12 hours or 12 years — I feel lucky to have crossed paths with you, so every piece of your being will be going into my memory compartment, whether you like it or not. The guy who had a very annoying, proper Swedish pronunciation of the word cheese. Drinking shitty prosecco and biding time at the nail salon. That one time I watched two lovers argue in the middle of a street, or that one other time I embarrassed you at the restaurant, old ladies gossiping at a brasserie, or when we rented scooters in the middle of nowhere. I remember waking up to a Springsteen song wondering if that was meant to impress me or to juxtapose my ultra-modern zoomer music taste. The polo shirt you wore to see me. I remember helping you pick out a jacket. Sydney with you, Brussels without you, Madrid with the anticipation of you. Each of the “you” is a different person, by the way, and that’s the confusing part. There were so many, and memory doesn’t discriminate. I’m merely an extension of things I’ve touched, seen, and heard — an intricate mosaic where moments that once were are no longer, stuck in shallow nostalgia waters and treading swiftly so they don’t sink.

It gets worse when it comes to the people I’ve loved that are, by some happenstance or casualty, no longer in my life. We’re adding the complexity of heartfelt motion on top of my already borderline unhealthy fixation on minutiae, and that’s just a recipe for disaster. Look, now I can’t perceive the world around me beyond the context of our once-existing relationship. The association game is a fun one: everything and anything is somehow connected to someone, and I can’t seem to shake it off. That book? Recommended to me by an ex. That artist? Mentioned in passing by a friend I haven’t spoken to in a good decade. A boat ride? We were supposed to do one together. It doesn’t matter that I’ve had dozens of boat rides in my lifetime and none of this defines what we had. No significance, nothing tied to it, but I remember. I remember, I remember, I remember. Go me.

That’s not to say I enjoy it all. Sometimes all I want is to scrub my hard drive clean down to the very last detail. Disassemble. Hard reset, pour gasoline on it and burn it down. What are all these artifacts for? Not helpful or friendly. Technically, I could use my memory as a weapon, but I’m not doing anything remotely strategic or important to utilize it in a way that matters or put it on my CV. Plus, I could use forgetting the bad parts: I don’t need to remember the acidic taste of the hurtful words, the crying and the stinging, endless stomach pits, the loss and the awkward silence. Remembering gets heavy sometimes, weighing down on my shoulders. Too loud, too bright. Too much. I picture tilting my head and banging on my ear hoping something spills out of the other. You do that when you’ve spent the day at the beach and your hearing is all muffled from salt water. Nothing comes out. Still in there, splashing.

For the most part, I remember things with sweetness and tenderness. And for the most part, I’m grateful. I’m okay with your forgetfulness if you’re okay with my vigilance. My pockets are full of rare seashells. Who am I if not the little details of you, of him, of her, of them? I get to write it all down and turn it into stories, and that should count for something.

Do you remember?

with reticence,

valerie