A Memory Away from Forgetting

There’s a little square widget on my phone that keeps bringing me back to things I haven’t asked to remember. I’ll pick it up to check the time or answer a message, and there, between all the ordinary things I need to do today, will be a photograph from a life that feels both unmistakably mine and impossibly far away. My dogs that passed away last year. Daisy and Dexter. A beautiful trip I took with someone. Me, sitting in front of a mirror creating a makeup look for no particular reason except that I had an idea and wanted to see what I could make of it. A face I used to see every day and no longer speak to.

Most of these photographs are happy. That’s what makes the sadness so difficult to explain. Nothing terrible is happening inside the frame. Everyone is still here. I’m still making things. The photograph has no idea what comes afterward, and for a moment, looking at it, I wish I didn’t either.

Sometimes I tap on it and find myself wandering through everything around it. What else happened that month? What was I wearing? Who was I talking to? I look at my face as though there might be something in it that explains how I felt back then. Was I happy, or have I simply forgotten what I was worried about? Did I know how much there was to miss?

The photos of Daisy and Dexter are their own kind of ache. I can look at them and almost remember the feeling of having them close enough to touch. It’s strange how a photograph can make them feel so present while reminding me, so painfully, that they aren’t. For a second, there is that familiar little lift in my heart. Then I remember.

And sometimes the person I miss is me.

I miss the girl who could spend hours making something just because she wanted to. The one who would get an idea for a makeup look and actually feel excited to sit down and try it. I know she was still me, with her own worries and disappointments, but I look at what she made and wonder where that part of me has gone.

Lately, I pick up my camera and feel bored before I’ve even taken a photograph. I try to finish this swan painting I started months ago, and after a little while, I’m ready to put the brush down again. I want to want to do it. I want to lose an afternoon in something and look up surprised that the light has changed. Instead, I keep waiting for a feeling that doesn’t arrive.

Writing has been the one thing I still feel drawn toward. I want to write all the time lately. Just putting my thoughts into words helps me in an almost thereapututic way. I’ll think of something while walking or sitting alone, and suddenly I need to get it out of me. Maybe I’ve been so busy looking for my creativity in the places it used to live that I haven’t given myself much credit for finding it here. Still, I miss the other things. I miss the ease of being interested.

I’ve always had a way of throwing myself into something completely. I want to learn everything, try everything, spend every spare moment doing it. Then, somewhere along the way, I feel as though I’ve figured it out. I haven’t, of course. There is always more to learn. But the urgency disappears, and I start looking toward the next thing that might make me feel that excited again.

It scares me a little to admit that I recognize something similar in the way I let go of people, although getting to that point is usually much harder.

With people, I hold on. I give chances, then find reasons to give another. I remember who they were when things were good, and I keep hoping we can get back there. Sometimes I think I could survive almost anything if someone would just sit beside me and want to work through it with me.

But eventually, something changes. After all the thinking and hoping and trying, there comes a day when I feel myself say, Okay. I’m done.

From the outside, it might look sudden. Inside, it has usually taken a long time.

Once I reach that place, I can become very determined about leaving someone behind. I stop looking. I stop asking. I try to clear them out of the little spaces they’ve occupied in my day, and eventually, they take up less room in my mind, too. I’ve done it with friendships. I’ve done it with family. I mourn the relationship for a while, sometimes with the finality of a death, and then I teach myself to live without it.

I don’t know whether that is healthy. I don’t know how much of it is acceptance and how much is the only way I’ve learned to protect myself from continuing to hurt. I just know it has helped me keep going.

But there are people I don’t want to do that with.

Even knowing that I can eventually build a life where I no longer reach for them, some part of me resists beginning. I don’t want their name to become ordinary. I don’t want to hear a song one day and realize I’ve stopped thinking of them when it plays. I wanted them here, growing older alongside me, becoming part of all the photographs I haven’t taken yet.

There is something heartbreaking about realizing you have the ability to get over someone when getting over them was never what you wanted.

And yet I know wanting them here can’t make them stay. I know there comes a point when holding on means spending my days waiting for someone who is choosing a life without me. I can understand that perfectly and still wish, with an embarrassing tenderness, that they would change their mind.

There’s a sentence that comes to me in those moments: Nothing humbles you faster than realizing you meant nothing to the person who meant so much to you. I don’t know that I meant nothing. I can’t see inside someone else’s heart. But their absence can make it feel that way, especially when I’m left holding so many memories and wondering whether they ever stop to hold one too. It hurts to have made so much room for someone and find myself unsure whether they even notice the space I’ve left behind.

The strange thing is, I can feel myself getting closer to letting go. Seeing their name doesn’t always bring that familiar drop in my stomach anymore. There is a light at the end of this tunnel now, and even on the days when it seems far away, I can see it. It’s just taking me a little longer than usual to get there. Every day, I pray that God will help me reach it sooner. Sometimes my prayer is barely more than, Please. I’m tired of feeling this way. Help me get to the end of that tunnel.

I want Kristina back. I want to wake up curious about something besides what I’m trying to understand or forget. I want an idea to interrupt my day and make me reach for my camera. I want to sit in front of that swan painting and stay long enough to see it become something.

I know I’ll never be exactly the girl in those photographs again. Too much has happened since then, and I wouldn’t want to lose everything I’ve learned just to feel like her. But I believe the woman I’m becoming can be better. I can imagine her making things again, feeling excited again, carrying what happened without having to think about it all the time. I just wish I could get to her a little faster.

Sometimes I wonder whether getting there means accepting that some of my old interests might not come back in the same way. Maybe I’m waiting for an earlier version of myself to tell me what I love, when I should be paying attention to what interests me now.

I moved on from creating makeup looks. Something that once took up so much of my imagination gradually became something I could appreciate without needing to do anymore. I can miss that chapter and still know I don’t necessarily want to return to it.

And I’ve moved through the worst of the pain of losing Daisy and Dexter, even though a photograph can still catch me completely off guard. I’ve learned to live without their little bodies beside me. That doesn’t mean I love them any less. It means the love has become something I carry into the rest of my life.

Photography feels different. Even now, when I pick up my camera and struggle to feel inspired, I don’t believe I’m finished with it. I love it too much. I still notice the light falling across a room. I still see things I want to remember. Somewhere underneath this tiredness, that part of me is still paying attention.

Maybe that’s why letting go of certain people takes me so long. I still love them so much. I keep looking beneath what has happened for the feeling that made me want to stay, and I find it there. Quiet sometimes, painful other times, but there.

I’m beginning to understand that the love might not disappear forever, but I have to move forward. I have to take those first steps while I still miss them, while I still wish the story had turned out differently. Maybe I’ve been waiting to feel nothing because I thought that would make leaving easier. But I don’t feel nothing when I see Daisy and Dexter. I love them, and somehow I’ve still learned to have good days.

I can’t promise myself that letting go will bring my creativity rushing back. But I wonder what I might feel like with a little more room in my own head. What I might notice. What I might want to make.

For now, I write. I leave the swan painting unfinished a little longer. I look at the photographs and try to let myself miss what they hold without deciding that everything beautiful is behind me.

Then my phone shows me another memory, and there we are again, untouched by everything I know now. I let myself look. Sometimes I smile before the sadness comes. Sometimes I’m able to close the photograph and go on with my morning.

Those are small things, but I think they mean I’m getting somewhere.

I’m opening up to getting to know other people again, too. I’m curious about someone else’s stories, finding myself enjoying a conversation without wishing I were having it with them instead. It feels good, even if there is a sadness in realizing I’m becoming capable of something I once didn’t want: a life that keeps growing without them in it. I still wish things had been different, but I’m starting to want to know what happens next.

Maybe for now, while I’m healing I’ll delete that widget off of my phone. Apart of me doesn’t want to completely forget but for now, maybe its for the best.