The Language of Forgotten Memories Part One

The first part of a collaborative piece.

Memory is our very own unreliable narrator. Retelling short stories of our past, stories subject to change, interpretation, and emotion.

Memory is not fair. Not even accurate. Just deeply human.

Over time, the distance between us and our memories causes them to blur and shift. And like the horizon intertwining with the sea, we no longer see where one memory begins and where one memory ends. And so we revise them without realising. Colouring them with longing and meaning. Sometimes, when we go back to those memories, we remember moments more beautifully than they were. More gentle. More soft. Other times, we go back and soften the sharp edges of the pain just to make the moment bearable.

We recall those who hurt us with fondness. Our narrator desperate to think of what we wish had been true over what actually was. We remember their warmth but not their coldness. We remember their softness but not their sharpness. Maybe it is denial. Maybe it is survival. Maybe our narrator is trying to lessen our burden by reshaping what we once knew, especially when the truth feels too heavy to hold.

Sometimes, the opposite is true. Memories overflowing with more pain than the moment ever held. Grief sharpening blades. Regrets casting shadows. Silence stretches across chasms. Is this not also denial? Survival? To cast those in the shadows because it is easier to accept they brought darkness than to accept how we dimmed ourselves in their presence.

The truth of our memories is not in the facts but in our feelings. They stay where they are fed, even if it is by our imagination alone, and they become what they eat.

We focus on moments that support our story, forget the ones that complicate it, and revisit some until they finally make sense or until they no longer hurt to relive. We romanticise what we should have released. We cling to edited versions of past characters, blind to how they harmed us. We yearn for people who only existed in hopes long gone. And we judge ourselves harshly for things that no longer matter, or never mattered to begin with.

The language of forgotten memories. Not truly forgotten, but translated into something we can live with. That is the beautiful tragedy of memory. For it tells us more about who we are now than what truly was.

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I recall the way you said my name,
Softer, maybe, than you ever actually did.

I try not to remember the sighs, the pauses,
The way you would look everywhere, but at me.

Some nights, I imagine you kinder,
So I don’t have to admit that I overstayed my welcome.
Other nights, I imagine you crueller,
So I don’t have to admit that I miss you dearly.

My memory will betray me.
My heart and my mind.
And it will betray you.
It will betray us.

But maybe what matters most is not how it was,
But how it shaped me.
What I felt.
What felt real to me.

The memory does not have to be perfect.
It just has to be mine.
Proof that I dared to love,
And will love again.