Memories, Soap, and a Game

Can it be said that what I cherish the most is the leading cause of my destruction?  I have always had a keen memory; it keeps track of everything.  Due dates, deadlines, social occasions -- my mind keeps track, and I never use a calendar or reminding device.  I'm proud of my memory; it's useful.  If you tell me something of import or interest or humor, I will remember that you said it, how you said it, in what context, and when.  Even when you think a conversation is over with me, I walk around replaying certain portions.  I hear or think or see something that reminds me of, or relates back to, what you said, and I revise my thoughts on our previous discussion.  In relationships, this is also of some practical use.  It shows people that I paid attention when I remembered what they said as referred to above.  Remembering oftentimes equates to people thinking you care more than those who remember less.  It's also less annoying for the speaker because he/she does not have to go back over what he/she's already told me.  Hence, remembering has some benefit in relationships.  But that's about it.

Once I've remembered, I don't know how to forget.  There is no erase button.  And, unfortunately, while I learn data/rules of law/factual things everyday that would seemingly push out or push back other things held in my memory store, only the trivial and the mundane factual information bits seem to fall back or disappear altogether.  The relational memories always remain.  So many of my relational memories are triggered by certain cues.  By ridding my life of the cues, perhaps I could achieve some reprieve in the continual onslaught of certain memories.  For example, I have this soap on the counter by my kitchen sink.  It's a "Myers soap," and I must have bought it at a whole foods or organic type store hoping that its natural ingredients would not inflame my tender, eczema-riddled skin.  I rarely use it now; it's been in its same position for a few years.  When I use it randomly once every two-to-four weeks, I remember everything all at once like a Proustian petit madeleine booming, memory-multiplying experience.  When I do, the simple outdoorsy smell makes me think of just one thing -- ________ for just one second, and then everything springs out from her and that time period like an atomic bomb.  I remember making breakfast tacos with her every weekend.  You see, I can still cook, but I don't bother making anything all that decent anymore.  I'm just cooking for me.  In my mind, I don't deserve the finest ingredients -- they seem expensive now, and time also appears to be at more of a premium.  But back then, a weekend morning was a time to impress, a time to show love and warmth.  She deserved the finest ingredients; she deserved the slow steady process to make "Papi's breakfast tacos" (cutting the onions, peppers, and jalapenos just so, drenching them in fresh-squeezed lime juice, sauteeing the onions, jalapenos, and peppers, cooking the applewood-smoked bacon just so, tearing it into small pieces, cracking, beating, and whipping the eggs and cooking them at just the right temperature with the fixings, adding in the best Mexican melting cheeses at just the right time, adding the bacon, making sure the whole wheat tortillas would be warm and ready with the eggs, cutting the cilantro and having it ready, laying out the peach salsa and orange juice, etc...).  She would come out and help me with the cooking.  She had taken a few cooking classes and had become an expert at chopping up on onion like a pro.  She also inspired me to have clean hands when I would go from one thing to another like they teach you on the cooking shows.  She never told me that I needed to be washing my hands with the soap.  She would do it, set the example, and I would follow like an enamored babe, relatively unthinkingly.  Yes, I had eczema then too (far worse actually), but I applied the soap.  She would await the feast with genuine, unentitled happiness every time, sneaking in intermittent kisses with unabashed love and devotion.  It was a special time.  It's all gone now; she's gone.  But the soap remains.  I could toss it, but I know with certainty what it brings back when, for whatever reason, I decide to use it again.  It's a combination of extreme joy (when at first I'm able to place myself completely in the vacuum of the past) and heart-stopping loss (when the present gradually invades, taking with it the fresh, vicarious realness of my thoughts of myself and _____ as the actors and replacing them with aged, dull, treacherous, lifeless ghosts not remotely like her or me).  It's a clear window into my past that I can open whenever I want to.  Is it best that I hold onto the soap?  ...I don't know.

The same thing happens when I see the Scrabble box in the corner of my room.  When I was unemployed and depressed, and helping my mom through a divorce emotionally and legally, I became a recluse.  I decided I wouldn't drink; I wouldn't socialize; I almost refused to have fun with others besides _____.  I was fearful of a further loss of control over my life, and any further dispensing of money.  I didn't sleep.  I was an anxious, troubled mess constantly spinning a vicious wheel of fears that landed uncontrollably on my mother's divorce, my mother's emotions and well-being, my employment prospects, my floundering career, my past...  _____ did not get the attention she deserved, but she cared so much for me.  She had everything money could buy, she had friends wishing to be with her at any given moment, and yet she came over to my place with a Scrabble board, complete understanding and zero expectations, and said, "Let's play!" in the most chipper and refreshing voice I can imagine.  Again, _____ is gone, but the board remains.  Is it best that I hold onto the game? ...I don't know.

All this brings to mind a certain Death Cab for Cutie song (lyrics below).  I am contemplating total defeat, but I have not (yet) developed the same courage and callous disregard of the past as the subject of the song.  I don't know how to abandon anything, let alone a bottle of soap (that's rarely used), or a simple board game (that collects dust).  I can't help but invite a flood of memories still all this time later.  You will have to tell me whether I'm drowning because I do not know how to make that meta-determination (from the inside in).

"Your New Twin Sized Bed"

You look so defeated lying there in your new twin size bed.
With a single pillow underneath your single head.
I guess you decided that that old queen holds more space than you would need.
Now it's in the alley behind your apartment with a sign that says it's free.

And I hope you have more luck with this than me.

You used to think that someone would come along.
And lay beside you in a space that they belong.
But the other side of the mattress and box springs stayed like new.
What's the point of holding onto what never gets used?

Other than a sick desire for self-abuse.

And I try not to worry, but you've got me terrified.
It's like your some kind of hurry to say goodbye, say goodbye, say goodbye.

You look so defeated lying there in your new twin size bed.
You look so defeated lying there in your new twin size bed.