The Erosion of Memory
“Some stories are true that never happened.” ~Elie Weisel
My memories are being eroded; they are being washed away bits and layers at a time. And once I walk through the valley of my mind, stooping to sift through the remains, I realize that I cannot separate the pieces that are fact from those that are fiction.
I do not know when this loss officially began. Some of it is probably because of Time: that crafty little clock ticking over the world, softening the edges of our memories so they are unable to prick and stab as they cycle through our souls. More than this, though, I believe the washing away happened after I twisted the details of my life to fit into the novel form. Through writing Segregation at Springcreek, I wanted to analyze every portion of my past and — in the end — more fully embrace my present.
Well, that part worked. After nine months, I’d composed a scrapbook filled with stories of my life and how they slid together to form an almost cohesive whole–but, not quite. Gaps in my memory yawned here and there, which I filled with snapshots of fiction. Soon, I could not recall which pages of my scrapbook story were true and which mere figments of my imagination.
Don’t believe me?
Just this week, after writing about the moment I first fell in love with my husband, I was lying in bed, all moony-eyed, while replaying the scene in my mind as I had written it. Suddenly, I gasped and almost elbowed my already slumbering husband, for the memory as I had written it, in reality, had not unfolded that way at all!
It wasn’t a tremendous shift in the-moment-I-knew-I-loved-him story (mainly just the setting had changed) but it was a shift nonetheless. It terrified me. Does Alzheimer’s run in my family? I thought. I should’ve thrown that peeling Teflon pan out months ago and stopped using that one kind of baking powder that health nut warned me about!
After that I remained awake, shuffling through memories and those I had written like they were separate stacks of almost-same cards–trying to reassure myself that I could distinguish fact from fiction. But I couldn’t. People were present in my memories that — when I truly thought about it — were completely removed from the circumstances in which those moments took place. Altercations erupted, words were spouted that I had always wanted to do and say but had never worked up the gumption to utter. I was like Clementine Kruczynski in the movie Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind except I was the one who — through writing — was deleting and cutting away certain painful remembrances and pasting them with something far more pleasant to recall.
My memories are being eroded; they are being washed away bits and layers at a time. And once I walk through the valley of my mind, stooping to sift through the remains, I realize that I cannot separate the pieces that are fact from those that are fiction.
Oh, wait — I can’t remember — have I already written that?