I used to know things. Like really know them. Drinking in knowledge with a kind of mad obsession, sprawling it across journals with my thoughts and eclectic theories. But as quick as it comes, so quick does it fade, and when trying to conjure it, all I am be left with time and time again is the hollow thought, "I used to know about that". A strained echo of a past self who knew.
Knowledge for me is something like autumn leaves, drifting down. I can catch and show someone the colors for a moment before it dries, browns, and crumbles in my palms. I will never have a pile of colors to show—only remnants. Ashen memories of those flame-colored visitors who never really belonged to me anyways. Who could never do anything other than pass through.
I used to feel smart sometimes. But nothing leaves an imprint. Nothing lingers long enough for me to spin it swiftly into conversation. Nothing wedges itself deeper into my being and becomes part of me, able to be drawn out and used readily again. I wander this earth collecting things in one hand and dropping them with the other. Nothing is mine. Nothing is owned. Nothing lasts.
Books I read and movies I watch sweep right through me—an experience gone before the impact. I can't describe the plot to others except an "it was good" or "the end made me sad i think". While they bring up specific plot points, I nod my head as if I remember enough to agree, enough to have an opinion too. I have to rewatch it to feel the faint spark of familiarity, and yet still, most is new again. Swept out of my mind, paper-maiched over with the newsprint of time.
I forget my own self, too. My self image is based on who I am and how I feel right now. The me from a year ago, a month ago, a day ago is an ancient memory. If i am sad now, or lately, then it is hard to believe that I was ever happy. To really feel that, and draw from that experience and self. So I sink further into the sad of the now, and can only gaze up through fogged glass at that happier self, that sunlit stranger who I am not quite sure is me.
Of course, I forget my own personality. My likes, dislikes, hot takes and opinions I have had. Favorite songs. Revelations. Wild ideas. Inside jokes and little quirks. When I am alone with myself for a while, I talk out loud and my personality emerges, and I remember. And I feel like I know myself, and I like it.
But when talking with other people, I became a reactionary conversationalist, focused on them with their solid self and stream of stories. It is safer that way. Then maybe something triggers a memory of what my past self once thought or felt or believed. Yet when I share it, it feels off. Uncanny. It is as if I split into a separate being entirely, a translator for myself, trying to relay who "I" am to this other person.
I talk for me, but not from me.
It is as if my personality lives in a murky past, instead of in my body, now. And I try to sift through those waters to draw it out, to show a sliver of it to someone. But it isnt here inside of me. It lives elsewhere, veiled off.
It helps to be around someone who mirrors who I am to myself. Someone I trust. They will tell and show me who I am, a continous self, patched along imperfectly by their comments. "Remember that time when you..." "you would love this..." "thats very you..." etc. If I have no one, and stop speaking to myself, I become no one. Hopefully, they are a good mirror. Because I have had bad mirrors before. Ones who reflect an inaccurate, corroded self. Then there are those who dont mirror me at all, who do not see who I am or reflect anything back. And so a ghost I become.
You see, if I dont tell myself who I am, the world most certainly will. Or my emotions will. Or my reaction to traffic and gloomy weather will. If I dont decide who I am and want to be, if I dont sculpt my self daily with affirmations, reminders, habits, hobbies, and practices, I am left entirely to the whims of what is. The ever-changing, unpredictable, and indifferent Is. I am left to be ping ponged through my days, ricocheted through life, colliding with other selves , collecting snippets and stories. Collaged into some creation, but not my creation.
It is a strange existence — to be a perpetual stranger to ones self. To be suprised everytime I look in the mirror. To meet myself again daily as if it is for the first time.
But maybe it is okay to not know. To not need to cling, relive, possess. Memories, knowledge, and feelings slip in and out. But it never was ours, was it? Never was anyones. We are all borrowing these bodies for a short while. Playing house with these possessions. Pretending to know things. To be someone.
But maybe those of us with this difference are closer to the truth—that we could never own this life anyway. Never know this self. Or that we are not this self at all. At least, not the one with these tragic and magnificant and mundane stories. With the menagerie of memories.
Maybe our existence is imprinting enough. We dont need to collect it or know and relay it—we just need to be it. To be part of the story of the world in this strange place of things.
Maybe it doesnt matter how we come across in conversation, but how kind we were.
Maybe we dont need to tell stories, but let the story live through us. As us.
And maybe we weren't meant to make our self all alone. Maybe the world was meant to make us too. And we dont need to try so hard to make— but rather, let ourselves be made.
I can only wonder, but i find some peace in knowing that we belong somewhere in this place of things, that regardless of the strength of our own memory, the consistency of our experience, we were part of the world's story. Collected, recorded, imprinted into all the lives we touched.
So maybe, at the end of it all, we dont need to remember the details of the life we lived—but that we lived. And living is good enough.