Remembering

I watched a movie and it seemed everybody in it was trying to forget, but no matter how hard they tried, they remembered even more. So much so, that it became all they could do. Remembering what they were trying so hard to forget.

They would stare blankly at perfect strangers and loved ones alike and claim to know nothing. Rumours, conspiracies, gossip, they’d say. None of it was true. It was everything to remember something someone could point to. For years this was enough to push the voices that kept creeping into their minds away. But then the voices became so loud that they were forced to let them in, where they had always been, silenced.

A lifetime of trying to forget, to erase, is exhausting. I can’t forget those things I wish I could, they stay with me for days that turn into years, yet I never really claim to forget them, even though I wish to. But, I was reminded tonight that fighting to forget is doomed from the beginning.

It’s never about forgetting the past. It’s about remembering it differently.