Memories Of A Past Love

It’s weird to forget people. To hear a song, a melody, a chorus even, that brings you somewhere you haven’t been in so long. It happens, sometimes when you you’d never expect it. Often times that feeling is fleeting, the memory fading fast as it appears.

I remember the past, more now than I used to. I may simply be more aware of it as days turn to years. It’s easier to remember the past when you have more of it. I don’t miss these past few years or the first few. They’re much too new, or too vague. But I find myself missing those early adolescent experiences in between, the ones my students are waltzing and trudging their ways through.

The summits and pitfalls of youth often attack me with nostalgia. I miss seventeen and eighteen year old me. Those years melting the end of high school into the beginning of college, like two photographs spliced into one. I miss them with a sharp pain in my heart and stomach.

I heard a song tonight on the radio that hasn’t graced my ears since freshman year. I remembered my first love. But in reliving all those firsts, I somber up. It makes me sad to think of all the memories I can no longer remember.

I’ve forgotten all the detail of her voice, touch, even persona, like a vivid dream wearing off. Instead, I’m left with only brushstrokes. They bear the fleeting feelings of romance, but only in the abstract. I’m left encouraged by the flowery memories I’ve retained of a bygone era.

At the same time though, I’m fearful of how much has left me. Where will I be in fifty years of memorial erosion? What will be left of those brushstrokes after life takes its toll on my emotions? Where will these memories of younger me be. Will I remember him or will he abandon me.