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My Memory, Lethe

I remember talking with my uncle about my adventures as a teenager, and he nodded and laughed. Occasionally, he'd chastise me or put in a well-earned reminder that yes, this behavior taken to extremes could kill you... But mostly, it was like talking to a good friend.

The few times I tried to share with my father, I got a barrage of worries: "Alcohol poisoning could kill you. You drove a car there? Oh my God, that neighborhood is the worst, you could have been mugged!"

It wasn't even a fatherly worry. The problem laid deeper - for my father, this was what friends did. Friends talked about the dangers that lay beneath everyday life all the time, like sharp rocks underneath a glimmering ocean shore, coming to a tacit agreement that yes, oh my God, isn't life terrible? Isn't it dangerous?

It was too depressing, so I stopped talking with my dad about my fun adventures. That cut out a lot, so eventually I just stopped talking to my dad altogether.

It occurs to me that I have a very strange memory.

I can't really remember long-term events; they just sort of fade away. I'm terrible with names. I run into friends, and I remember that I really enjoyed their company, and I can tell you what they're like... But I can never remember exactly what it was that I did with them.

I dread reunions with my high-school and college buddies. They always - always - say, "Hey, don't you remember the time we stole a police car?" or some such event. It sounds really exciting, some of the stuff we did, and I really wish I'd been there... But the me standing here in 2002 simply wasn't there. The me that experienced that event is dead, buried in layers of fog.

Invariably, I smile wanly and say, "Hey, I must have forgotten that," and they tell me about something terribly witty I said, or something extremely foolhardy that we did.

It's a blank to me. My past is like a fog.

What I do remember is the hurt.

Gini and I went away on a trip Las Vegas; she had a good time. I remember the sharp pain of a fracturing marriage, every fight in crystal-clear detail, but no good times at all. We had a glorious night out, cruising on a boat up and down the shores of a fake Venice, holding hands and kissing like teenagers... But I have to force myself to remember it. Left to my own devices, my mind dredges up the worst.

Likewise, I spent seven years with Bari, and I know that somewhere we must have had something that kept us together... But again, I remember the arguments. I could chart the arguments of our relationship on a map, but I can't really remember a single romantic evening with her. I know we had them, because I can relate almost word-for-word the fights we had over the credit card bills that resulted from those nights.

But even then, I don't think about it much. She's gone.

People who leave me are like ghosts; I love the people who are with me intensely, more deeply than most people can. I have a vast capacity for loving the ones near me... But the minute they leave, they start to fade. It becomes harder and harder to see them. I forget to call, even though I know I should... But they're in the past, and the past barely exists for me.

I abandon easily. I dislike that about myself, but it's hard - so hard - to remember the men who aren't touching me now.

There is one exception to this, and that's stories. If I can encapsulate an event in an amusing story, then I can remember it; stories are my life capsule. But even then, I rarely have any sense memory of the events in the stories: I remember the facts, I remember how to arrange those facts for maximum impact, and I remember the punchline - but often it's a big frosted blank in my memory.

I have stories, intensely personal stories, that could have been someone else for all the emotional connection that I have to them. I simply relate them, and hope that they're still mine.

I think it's all a very big defense mechanism.

My father, I think, taught me to remember the worst of things; there is no worst-case scenario that is not factually true for him. The plane will crash. The car will be broken into. The friend will betray. I think that as a child, I somehow realized that I was walking down that path of continual self-negation...

...And forgot it. It was better to forget the past than to cling to it, to sift through it obsessively. I didn't have the techniques to create a past that I would remember well... So unconsciously, I began to degrade my memory so that I would barely remember anything at all.

It hurts me a lot. Not that I am hurt personally for it, but it makes growing a challenge.

Right now, Gini and I are doing well - really well, given that she's broken her shoulder and I'm working seventy-hour workweeks in my Tivoed prison - but it's difficult for me to establish any sort of continuum for me to work with. For me, I can never remember the three weeks of relative peace and quiet; every argument is a divorce.

Not for me; I'm as happy as I can be, in my secluded and strange foggy world. But since I'm not able to remember the past year of happiness, every screaming argument stands out as starkly as if it was the first. It's not a minor tear in a tapestry of tranquility; I don't see the tapestry. All I can see before me is what's here right now, this gaping rip, this hole in the fabric of our relationship... And I know deep in my bones that this is the divorce, this is the moment where it all fell apart, this is the sundering.

I can't see how tiny that little laceration is, as compared to the whole. I can't envision it.

It's exhausting for the both of us, really. I try.

Some days I curse my father, but then I realize he has it far worse. All he has is memories of regret, of loss, of continual shuddering fear of the dangers ahead. And they're terrible, bone-shattering dangers.

As for me, I've adjusted. I'm happy where I am, usually, but it's always unsettling to realize how little I know.

I think that's why I'm a writer. Words are my only way of recalling the past.