Edited by: Malavika Kishore
If life doesn’t break me, nostalgia will. I used to think the worst function of the human brain was remembering. Remembering broken friendships, the pet that passed away too soon, the day you hurt your knee at the football game, and the worst of all- old lovers. I used to despise flashbacks that ran through my head like blood through my veins. I spent my life running from familiar
scents, songs that reminded me of somebody that I used to know and I didn’t just stop there. I would drive an extra 5 minutes to ensure I didn’t have to drive past the place where we shared our first “I love you” moment. Honestly, you can call me an ostrich at this point. If I sink my
head into the sand and don’t see you holding me at gunpoint, I’m blissfully unbothered. I’m not in danger, I am safe. I love running. I love being on the go. I did it to such an extent that life hit me with something I was not ready for.
F O R G E T T I N G.
It’s much crueler than remembering. Forgetting you would think, is the end goal. But when you let forgetting steal the ache you also let it steal the love, the warmth and the was. Initially you are okay with forgetting the arguments, the sharpness and the pain. Then one day you wake up with no trace of them in your thoughts. Not even a glimpse of their smile, how they lit up the room when they talked about their passions, or how they said your name. And this guilt seeps into your soul. You feel like you have lost them for the second time — all over once again. Contrary to what you expected, no. Forgetting does not mean healing. It’s just the quietest form of losing. It’s losing over and over again.
I once read somewhere,“I am closing the door, but I will never lock it”. I am no longer sitting by the door, clutching my phone in my hands and feeling my heart sink with every tick of the clock. I am living my life— constructing a reality where I feel okay and alive and happy but in reality I am just trying not to remember. Trying to forget. Trying to escape. And god have I mastered this self-sabotaging skill. It’s a cruel, devoted thing. And at a point, no matter how fast I ran, nostalgia always caught up with me. I fought with every fiber of my body using all the energy stored in the mitochondria to fight.
Everyone tells me that when people leave, it happens for a reason, it makes you stronger. But when did I ever want to be stronger? I just wanted to be loved. To be accepted. To be understood. To be fought for against all odds of life. But maybe that friendship was not as meaningful as I sought it out to be. Maybe that love we shared wasn’t the soulmate connection I sought it out to be. Maybe it was like that necklace I found on my side table last night – something I don’t even remember keeping, something once precious, now gathering dust in a forgotten corner. And somehow, it still made my chest ache. Not because of what it is… but because of what it used to
be. To forget is to bury love twice — once when they leave and once when their name no longer stirs anything in you.
But what comes after forgetting? Where do I go next? The thought of having to forget someone new crumbles my insides and shakes my intestines leading to a collision of all my molecules like an earthquake. But guess what? There’s no escaping this. It’ll be tough accepting the unsettling, unwelcome quiet with no idea what’s waiting for you on the other side of that door. You and me both will have to face this new era where we are forced to unlock a new version of ourselves. Let me rephrase that. You and I will get to experience a new era where we will be a new version of ourselves. And if you look at it with an open mind, it’s going to be the most rewarding journey you will ever undertake.