Before the summer of 2019, you could shout your phone number from across the room at me and I could recite it backwards to you six months later. Even if I never called you, which I wouldn’t because, let’s be honest, it shows just a tad too much sincerity to actually call someone these days. If there was a contest for reciting every word to a song you only heard once 20 years ago, I’d win it every time. It might seem like a neat party trick to have superpower memory, but it also makes you the one responsible for ensuring shit gets done. My friends, my ex-husband, coworkers, everyone got quite used to outsourcing the job of remembering their commitments to me. Even after years of sufficient technology for everyone to have a prosthetic memory, if I don’t remind certain people about the promises or plans they made, they literally do not happen.
Which means now, that stuff just doesn’t happen. I don’t even know how much because I can no longer remember every single thing I heard, most things I read, every cellular position of every feeling I’ve ever felt. I suppose it’s what I prayed for. Well, technically, I prayed to not be the only one who remembers everything. But I guess joining the ranks of the typically forgetful is one way of answering that prayer. Just like God to respond in ways we never expect, though sometimes I wonder if God responds contrary to what we expect because it’s contrary to what we expect.
Why are you upset ask my friends when, after three years, I voice my fears about memory loss. You’re basically normal now. It’s like they’re happy that life has finally Whack-A-Mole-d me back to their level: I’m not myself anymore, but at least I don’t show them up by showing up to things they don’t remember saying they’d be at, even invited me to. At least I now longer have the ability to hold anyone to the “too-high” standard of keeping their word on their own without prodding. At least they don’t have to feel like crap for not remembering basic stuff—it’s just me that feels like crap for not remembering now instead of being the only one who could recite a random phone number in reverse order months later.
But that also meant I was the only one who believed you could only mean what you say if you remembered saying it. The only one who didn’t need a calendar to keep track of my schedule. The only one who thought that having to remind someone multiple times of a commitment they voluntarily made was nagging as well as a sign that maybe their commitment wasn’t as voluntary as they were projecting it was.
Of course, there’s one situation now where I hope I’m the only one: the one where I’m the only one who doesn’t remember what happened in the summer of 2019.
