Just a few hours ago I watched a video from arguably my favorite YouTuber of all time, Shayna Klee aka The Purple Palace. I’ve watched her for years now, bought her books, and kept up with virtually everything she’s put out. I love her to pieces. In one of her most recent videos, she walks through a park that she’s got layers upon layers of memories in, and expounds on the idea that time heals all wounds.
Naturally, this got me instantly caught in a mental loop of all of the places that I have years of memories in. My old job, my Target-Starbucks that I worked at for 3 years. Elmwood Park, Illinois, as a whole. The cross-streets of State and Lake in Chicago. There are so many.
Recently, I’ve ventured into some of those places. It’s a mind-fuck every single time, no matter who I’m with, no matter the circumstances of me being there, or the mood I was in before going to those places. No element of variables relating to my being there can change how much the weight of love and loss crushes my chest.
Ever since I was a little girl, I was aware that the good times don’t last forever. The first time I was consciously aware of it was during a sleepover in the eighth grade with my best friend at the time. We never got to see each other, and somehow I knew it was going to be the last time. I remember lying in her bed at 2 a.m., my ever-chronic insomnia rearing it’s ugly head, and staring around her room, begging myself to remember every single detail so I would never forget. A decade later, and I haven’t. I’m obsessed with remembering everything about all of my core memories as I chronicle them while living them. It’s an out-of-body experience, each time. I stop myself mentally and say “remember this”, and I always do.
Thus, I am nothing if not hyper-aware of the trajectory of my life. It’s all I think about, it keeps me up at night. It’s what I write the most about. I’m completely in touch with my past experiences, and how they came to be, as well as how they’ve gone. So how could I not be in the places where those experiences have happened and not be overwhelmed by the gravity of it? This, especially when many of those memories are either bad ones, or ones that hindsight paints blue.
I recently went downtown, Chicago for the first time in a while. I walked around the Loop with my good friend, Jessica. We went down the Riverwalk, by the Marina Towers. And it sent me right back to May of ‘22. It doesn’t matter that it’s been almost a year, doesn’t matter that I was with a friend I love and trust; I was still right back there. May 18th.
When someone breaks your personhood in two, there’s no such thing as forgetting. Hell, forgiving, at least for me, doesn’t seem plausible. When you love someone more than words can say, that cannot be forgotten either. When you love in a way that threatens to rip the moon out of the sky in a sacrificial offering just to make them smile, going back to the park where you threw rocks into the stream and bread to the birds won’t ever not reek of a youthful love. All of it hurts, but that’s not how it’s supposed to be.
BUT. The good news is that there’s always room to make new memories.
The park with the mistletoe on the arch leading in, asking him for a corny kiss under it. Him obliging with a joking roll of his eyes. The local bar’s trivia night, a brisk October night, the first time out together. Nervous chatter, watching each other carefully, balancing thoughts in your brain, calculating with a gentle curiosity. Who would’ve known we’d be here today? The playlist you made me isn’t surprised. The poem I wrote after our first Harry Potter night isn’t either. October 23rd. All of it is safe.
Everything I’ve experienced, the memories that are still gaping wounds today have informed the person that I am, and I really like who I am. I love being Carlotta, even when I want nothing more than to get out of my head. The bruises and gashes have turned into scars around my heart and they’ll always be there. That’s okay. Stars can be created around them too. And that’s happening right now.