By Mila Long
Playground games turn to lunchtime drama as kids get older and think forgetting is what it means to mature. Lovers turn to strangers and choose to ignore once innocent smiles and blushes. Trauma turns to laughter when one wills to forget the pain they once experienced. To move on is human nature but it has become normal to think that moving on means to abandon their past forever. One has to choose to ignore, choose to forget, without giving the past the time it may need. It's important to decipher what is a memory that is worth it to forget? How does one forget a memory?
The past does not define us, but repression does. Voluntarily forgetting memories is forgetting a part of ourselves, even if it isn't our favorite part within us. Sometimes it is necessary to forget, but that requires time. It requires thought. It requires deciphering between what is and is not important for the future. What memories do we forget? What is it we should forget? Is it better to forget what once was the world, or is that just a coping mechanism?
When one is little, the future is dependent on if you win the tag or other contests. As a person becomes more accustomed to popularity and the parameters of our societal view on maturing, they choose to forget that simplicity and childhood fun. Tag and hop scotch become scarfing down food in a shortened period and whispering over the drama that hurts us or our friends.
This is all defined by what it means to mature. In middle school, popularity contests change our perception of ourselves. It was once okay to smile in our own way and play our own games, but then the looks and the deception stop innocence and laughter in their tracks. The mirrors become enemies and thinking of the past does more harm then it does good. What does it mean to mature? Does it change? Is what middle schoolers and others think is maturing actually so? Does it all come back eventually?
Maturing changes, and with the new importance that has now been placed onto discovering an inner child, it seems like all the forgetting was for nothing. An in the moment decision to forget, a lifetime trying to remember.
Lovers turned to strangers is a trope in the history books. When people break up or press the block button, they choose to forget momentary happiness. It isn't always happy, sometimes it's so much worse than that which is why these sweeping generalizations are not universal. Humans are so determined to forget anything when the ending does not live up to the storybook ending.
Reality and fiction are harsh dividers, traversed by our delusion and desire to always jump into the next moment. Once two people, happy as ever, become never meeting each other's eyes. As soon as the alarm beeps and they are done, it is never the same. They may pass at each other, never acknowledging the history that haunts them behind closed doors.
Their memory contains a massive black hole, or a tear blotching out time they can't stand to see. Forgetting, or trying to, doesn't mean it will be gone forever. Sometimes all it takes is a book they spoke of or a color they always wore to ruin a moment or longer. Memories voluntarily forgotten, do not stay that way forever. Is it possible to move on when the past is a sore subject?
Questions are asked, and yet I can't find an answer. Love is so highly regarded everywhere. It's built up in stories we grew up with and television programs we never stop watching. When it comes time that one experiences it, and it ends, often they don't know what can be next.
So they chose to forget. Ignore so much that makes them who they are, in both good and bad ways. A loop of memory and forgetting, till experience is nothing but letters spelled on a page. Strangers from lovers is a paradox, as what does it mean to be a stranger?
To forget is an act of human nature. Moving on is another one of those acts. To repress oneself, repress the history that is written on the page even if it is crossed out, is a laborious decision. This decision is often made in seconds, or less then. Not all experiences we can choose to forget but there are those we have to. Time is a friend of humans, as it makes that action for us. Save grace for your inner child, for the romantic, for all those people you have been.
Memories fade, become stories for the future, but good comes from all that which is forgotten. To forget and to move on are not synonyms, it is a cause and effect.
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