Fading Memory

Reflecting on memories of my youth was once like reliving the moment. Each emotion felt fresh, gripping my heart, and every thought was printed in my mind like words forever inked on a page.

Over the last five years, this changed.

I am not reliving the moment anymore. Instead, I am an outsider reflecting on a life that is no longer mine. An eternal concrete wall holds a window tightly in place and it’s through this window that I watch my younger self as I dredge up old memories. This window of memory used to be clearer, but the glass is collecting dirt and scum around the edges, and scratches across the panes obscure my vision.

Through the window I see the young girl with a scrunchie in her hair, slightly overweight, shoulders raised and hunched with her low self-esteem. I can’t see the expression on what used to be my face. I can’t remember how I was feeling on this day. Was I upset? Did I always look this uncomfortable?

I can’t remember.

This girl’s life and experiences are so distant now, so foreign. No matter how hard I squint through the dirtied glass, she remains out-of-focus to me.

Why am I looking upon her rather than being her? It seems we are two different people. My heart doesn’t squeeze with emotion anymore as I reflect on my past; that girl’s heart and my heart are unique things, now. The words imprinted on the pages of my life are smudged, and now I can’t remember the thoughts I was having.

If I were to reach out and touch the wall, I imagine it feels rough and jagged, like unsmoothed concrete. Is the wall designed to keep me out, rather than the memory in?

Why has my mind turned against me?

I feel like an intruder in my own memories. These moments in time used to feel tangible and relatable. I could remember them like it was yesterday. What did I do which forced me to become an outcast to myself?

Facial features of the girl are gone and her speech is reduced to a buzzing sound that can’t penetrate the glass. Soon, this window will be boarded up and I will lose her. A sadness fills me now, tinged with regret. I wish I cherished my experiences more and wrote a journal or something to save the existence of my younger self. Memory doesn’t last forever. She won’t last forever. My younger self is close to death and I know I will follow.

An older woman will peer through a memory window at me one day. She’ll wonder why I wear this expression, unable to recall what worries me. I am going to feel like a stranger to her, on the cusp of her memory banks, slowly sinking, fading out of reach. My existence in this instant will be forgotten.

This is the death before death, and it scares me that the decay and decline have already started. I am only twenty-nine years old, but already my death has begun with the end of an eleven-year-old girl.

Thing is, I think I am the killer.

This is my mind and my life, so this wall and scratched window are my doing as well. The memories probably aren’t good ones, so maybe I put this wall up to distance myself from the life I left behind long ago. Since my childhood, I have grown and changed, become someone better. I am not the person who the girl wanted me to be, though.

I started smoking when I was twenty-three. Is that when the concrete of the wall poured? When I was younger, I detested cigarettes and swore I would never smoke, but here I am, disappointing that version of myself. A betrayal of my own values may have been the driving wedge between us. I have changed too much to be close to that girl anymore.

As time passes and age drags me kicking and screaming onward through life, I am a continually shifting and growing person. Presently, I’m a unique entity to this girl I can barely see through the window of memory, but I don’t want her to leave me. Between these different versions of myself, there has to be a constant, something to help ground my sense of self… but I can’t find it.

The girl is quickly disappearing.

Desperately, I try to think of something about that girl that still lives within me. I have to save her somehow! I find nothing, and she slips away from me. As I lose her, I feel uncomfortable in my body and suddenly I am struggling to remember why I am the way I am. The experiences that shaped me as I grew are slowly fading, and I am feeling like a stranger in my body.

The window of memory shifts to a twelve-year-old girl and the process repeats as I am forced to watch my past self die again. It won’t be long until it’s my turn to fade into non-existence.