Nothing is ever deleted from human memory. Every experience, whether sad or glad, once accommodated by the mind, stays there forever. Just like a child in her mother’s heart.
Of course there are experiences that we forget, especially the ones that cause us pain. But they are not deleted; they just recede. And this is an inescapable trickery of memory: those that we deem erased just suddenly surface, more vivid than ever.
Like guerrillas, unwanted memories assault when and where they are least expected, always during vulnerable moments. Some with the stunning sharpness of a glass shard, others with the lulling gentleness of a moth’s wings. Either way, memories carry just one mission: to disturb and inflict pain. Yes, memory is more cruel than it is kind.
So we resort to deleting, only to realize that it generates the opposite of what we want to achieve. Instead of slaying the enemy we just make it fiercer. The heavier the stone we crush upon it, the stronger it becomes, the more entrenched it turns. Escape from it? The farther we stride away from it, the larger it looms before us, the nearer and more taunting it stares at us.
What do we do then? Nothing, just breathe. When it attacks, welcome it, face it smiling and without any resistance for from resistance it draws power. Let it coil into whatever shape it wants to manifest itself – just let it be, just laugh it off. Soon the growling monster will become a cooing child, so tender and helpless that we want to breastfeed it.
So since we can’t delete a memory, we must just dilute and befriend it. Just by doing nothing, just by accepting that we are god and demon at the same time – a creature called human that can wrath, gloom, love, and lust.
notmytongue.wordpress.com 