Forgetting the Unforgettable

I've recently lost someone who was very important to me. Was being the key word in that sentence. I didn't lose this person to death, but rather because of a certain set of circumstances (read: her being a whore). Moving past the sadness, which I'm over at this point. And moving past the anger, which I'm not really over, leaves me pondering a difficult question that I've been forced to pose to myself: what do you do with some of the greatest memories of your life when the person you shared them with turned into a person you detest?

One of the real tragedies of a break-up is that you not only lose the other person, but that you lose a part of yourself in the process. The person that you came to be around someone you trust completely and share a special connection with. When the relationship is over, so are the inside jokes, shared experiences and memories you had with the other person. You'll never get those things back. In time, when you find someone else you begin to build a new set of experiences and inside jokes and whatnot. But they'll never be exactly the same as the ones you lost when an important person walks out of your life. What you are left with, are the memories you created together. The things you used to look back on to feel good about life, to get you through the bad times, to let yourself know that no matter what, someone out there cares about you. When that other person is gone, how are you supposed to deal with these memories that have suddenly become painful reminders of what used to be? Well, there are a few different ways to deal with them as far as I can see.

The first and most obvious to me, is to consciously not think about them. Try to cut those memories away and let them fade and eventually die from misuse. The benefit here being that you don't experience the pain that comes from thinking about happy times with a person you'll never talk to again. You don't have to compare your life now to your life when it was at its best. The old saying out of sight, out of mind really makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Constant reminders of a past that doesn't resemble your future seems like a one way trip to Misery Town to me. However, this method means you may be forcefully forgetting defining moments in your life. Option B?

The next course of action would be to embrace the memories. Remember the good for the good and to hell with the way things ended. Don't concentrate on the end but on the parts that were good. Think about the good times, the reasons the relationship meant so much, even the times you'll miss having now that it's over. If some of the best memories in your life happened with a person you now hate, does that mean you should have to give them up? Isn't that almost another victory for the person from your past? Why should I have to stop smiling about my past because she destroyed our future? The only problem is, looking back and dwelling in the past is a surefire way to miss the present and to be affected by the loss for a very long time. I don't want to swim amongst my memories if it means I had to shed the tears they're floating in.

Damned if I do, damned if I don't. The truth is, I'm on here writing because I'm still trying to figure it out. I don't have an answer. I can tell you that right now, I'm pushing every single thought of her out of my mind when she finds her way. Which, I'm happy to say, isn't as often as it was a week ago. Which was less than the week before that, and so on. Time takes away the pain and slowly you're able to move on. The question I ask myself is, when I no longer think about her anymore, should I? Should the eventual downfall preclude me from thinking about the climb? I've been here before but in the past I could push past the memories and move on because they didn't mean as much to me. They didn't cover such a long, significant portion of my life. As I write that I realize that forgetting our time together isn't possible. Not because she was so amazing, and not because I can't move on. Because we were together for so long, through so much that to forget every moment with her would be to forget my own life. Not every happy memory I have with her in it is special because of her. On the contrary, much of the times were just great times that she happened to be there for. They would still be happy if she'd never been there. She enhanced them at the time, but that doesn't mean I should forget about the times I had with other people while she was around.

The truth is, I can throw out the photo albums and delete the pictures from my computer, but the memories probably aren't going anywhere. Not the big ones. I'll always remember my first Sox game at Fenway not because I went with her but because it was my first Sox game at Fenway. I'll always remember partying in college and getting caught fooling around in conspicuous places, not because I was fooling around with her but because that was an integral part of my college experience. I'm going to keep these memories in my data bank because they're worth having. They're everything. And they're so much bigger than her. After time she can fade away as the memories remain strong and instead of "that time her and I went to so and so's wedding and had a blast", it'll become "so and so's wedding where I had a blast, I think whatsherface might have been my date". I don't have to get rid of the picture, I can just cut her out of it. Call me spiteful, or immature if you'd like, but that seems like a pretty good way to deal with the problem to me.

Of course, there are still those memories that really were special to me because of her. Those I guess I'll just have to deal with in a different way. For now, I think I'll choose not to think about movie nights and special dinners and those moments that make the rest of the world fade to gray around you. Those moments are important, for sure. But I don't want them. I'll remember enough to know that there was a time someone made me feel like I was the most important person in their life. I might even allow myself to remember that I felt the same way about them. But dwelling on lost love is as fruitless as any labor I could possibly attempt. So I'll try to avoid thinking about those moments that are just about the two of us, and I think that if I do that long enough, I'll have found somebody new. Then I can overwrite those memories because they won't matter anymore. I can get that feeling from memories I forge with somebody more worthy. When that'll happen, I have no idea. But I'm not worried, I know that there are more important things to do than worry about the past. I can still live my life. Who knows, in a few years I might look back on the times I'm having with my friends right now and remember them as some of the best in my life.