The day begins, and there is nothing to be tense about, so I lie in bed for a bit. Then, I stretch my arms before I walk to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. And then, nothing happens. I finish making the coffee and sit at the desk—like clockwork. Then, I am compelled to think of the security guards at the building who change shifts the same way each day, cracking the same jokes, I reckon, as they did yesterday. And the many commuters who work in large offices, shops and stores, and everywhere else. Before I know it, I am outside the moment at hand, doing, I reckon, a painstaking inventory of how people go around in circles, myself included, obviously. In another life, had my story gone differently than it has, I would have been a meticulous bookkeeper.
I note things as if my memory was as unreliable as a weather report, as fallible as a drunk’s testimony. It is here, too: in these words, in these pieces of my days. Every little thought I have had is here, and the thoughts not here are noted down to live another day. There are no exceptions to this because I note it all down, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes illegibly or in code, but I can always go back to my heart on a particular day. I can always come back to myself. And so, I sit here, every person I have ever been all rolled in one. My contradictions reach the surface like bubbles in a vat of acid. It would be a lie to say this was not a blatantly tiresome way to exist. I am jealous of those who forget, but I envy those who do not note things down more.
It is not just parts of myself but also things people left behind. Everyone we meet, everyone we get close to lends us something to carry forever, after all. Only some people forget things and do not note them down, so they live for the better. They forget what others gave them in old flats, between moving crates, among donations. And yes, I have tried to do it, too, but the records remain etched in my memory.
To cry over this would be some sort of gilded grief. All the good I have gotten, after all, is because I have remembered. It is just that all the things I wish to forget have remained, too.