Memory

You’re sitting on your bed; the cold night air comes in through the window along with the moths searching for light and warmth. The cool draft curls around your feet. Your pen scratches against the soft paper of your diary as the words spiral out in black ink, manic feelings of desperation and loneliness fill the empty pages. It feels like no one in the world has ever felt this alone, and there is no escape.

You rest your aching hand, setting the pen down and looking out of the window. You close your diary, chest aching, unable to get the tears out that you feel pooling in your eyes. You lean your palms against the windowsill and crane your neck to find the moon in the sky. Your eyes take in the comforting familiarity of a night sky that has remained the same your whole life. The same sky you would look up at in the back of the car on your way home from a long family trip, lit up lamp posts blurring as you drive past them at top speeds on the motor way.

Suddenly a heart wrenching memory returns to you, it’s vague and hazy like a foggy winter morning. A laugh, a hand touching a face, the sense of togetherness and tenderness. The memory is enough to hurt you all over again and you force yourself to return your thoughts back to the night sky.

You wish it wasn’t the middle of the night, you wish even more you understood what that memory was. The person in it seems so familiar, so happy. Someone who hasn’t known heartbreak like this, or maybe someone strong enough to overcome it. You return back to your diary, it’s open on your bedsheets and the pen is missing. You sit down and flip to the last page you wrote in, dreading the reminder of the words that were on your mind moments before. They aren’t there. The pages are empty. There is no turmoil filling the diary at all.

The memory again wracks your mind, coming in so powerfully it’s almost painful. It’s clearer now, though blurry at the edges. You still can’t recognise who it is, but you remember the sensation that it brings you, genuine contentment. This time you realise it isn’t somebody touching someone else’s face, they’re touching their own as they lean close to a mirror. They laugh light heartedly and turn away grinning. You can’t remember the last time a mirror made you feel anything but empty.

Just then you realise that the person in the memory is you. The old you, before something broke you. Where did she go? You used to love yourself and care for yourself. You put yourself first. What happened?

You flick through the empty pages, once full. Your life has disappeared in front of you. As you look at the stars sprinkling across the sky you realise you aren’t in your warm room. The fluffy blanket that once held the weight of your dog asleep in it is replaced by hospital slippers waiting to be put on, along with an array of medications. What was once a room filled with a heavenly glow of candles, fairy lights and colourful decorations was now grey and dull, sterile and practical.

You try to shake off the dread. You aren’t lonely, you never have been. You find a pen and go to the first page of the diary. You note down that you are not alone, you have the moon, and the stars. You once had yourself, but you lost that along the way.

One glance at the moon and you understand how it has looked over the planet for so long and, knowing all it knows, still shares its brilliance. It sees everyone and everything. It knows you. And now you know it.

Will I always feel this way? You whisper out loud, feeling unworthy. It comes out in an embarrassed croak. Of course, the moon does not reply. You shake your head, feeling ridiculous in your hospital gown and empty room. You don’t realise that the moon hears you, not in a human way, but it knows what you want. You feel the reply in the way your heart is light, and your eyes see clearly. You feel the reply in the tingling of your feet that makes you want to dance and the tapping of your fingers that makes you want to create.

That night the moon shows you that nothing is permanent, not this feeling and not the next one either. Happiness is found in the relationship you have with yourself, even if you get a little lost sometimes.

It is in you and around you and through you. It is in the way you laugh. It is in the way you sing, the way you dance, the feeling of sand between your toes. It is in the sound of the waves on the shore and the leaves in the wind. It’s in the breaths you take and the ones that you don’t, and all of the moments in between.

One day the pages will be full again, relationships just take some work.