The problem with memories

It is singular how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. A year impairs, a luster obliterates. There is little distinct left without an effort of memory, then indeed the lights are rekindled for a moment - but who can be sure that the Imagination is not the torch-bearer? ~Lord Byron

 

Recently, memories of my honeymoon have haunted me. I have been waking up in the middle of the night, wracking my brain to recall every detail of my few days in Hawai'i with my new husband. This honeymoon was ten years ago.

I have bits and pieces. Small details like the smell of my lotion, the color of the bedspread, the feel of the rental car. I can remember general events. Like how we went snorkeling one day, how we shopped in a street market another day, and toured a pineapple plantation on another. But the real details, the parts that I wish I could remember clearly, are the exact same parts that will forever remain foggy in my mind.

If you had asked me to recall these details just a year or so into our marriage, I would have smiled broadly and not hesitated to brag about our trip. How excited we both were. How the plane ride seemed to last an eternity, how John had done such an amazing job planning our activities and finding our condo. I would have painted you a picture of two blissful newlyweds, giddy with young love and oblivious to most of the world around us. (And it is at this very moment that I remember one tiny fragment of a memory. Goosebumps form on my arms as it hits me for the first time in years. There was a pool in the center of an open courtyard in our building. One afternoon we were coming back from a day of adventures around the island, laughing and hanging onto each other as only a happy couple can. We were poking fun at each other and John threatened to pick me up and throw me in the pool. I feigned a look of shock but then dared him to try, quickly darting away from his grasp. And although I was fast, he was faster, and he caught me quickly, laughed as he swept me off my feet, and proceeded to hurl both himself and me into the pool. We rose to the surface fully clothed and even more hysterical than we were before we jumped in.)

Yet, if you asked me to recall what I remembered from our honeymoon a year after our divorce, a much different picture would have emerged from my mind. The demise of our relationship and the bitter ending in the courtroom would have somehow leaked into my honeymoon memories, staining even the fondest of recollections. I would have told you about how I felt a sting of disappointment when all I really wanted to do was stay in bed with my new husband, but that all he wanted was to get out and adventure around the island. I would have told you how I hated the feeling of tension between us in even trying to order dinner out at a restaurant. Was I dressed well enough for him? Did I order the right food so he would feel I had appropriately impressed the waitress and the patrons sitting around us? I would have easily remembered the bitterness I felt when he was almost too embarassed to pull off the road for me to take pictures of the tropical countryside because he was worried about what other people would think. I would have told you that all the signs of our failure as husband and wife were all there, all along.

 

Or were they?

As I have been plagued by questions these last few nights, the wisdom of the daylight has brought me just one conclusion: that we only truly remember the moment we live in right now. Once this moment is gone from us, our perception of the past begins to shift and change as time passes, as our emotions ebb and flow, and as we allow others to impart their own bias on the memory.

I was convinced the other night that perhaps if I just made a phone call to my estranged ex-husband, I could ask him about his own perception of these memories that have been haunting me. Surely he could shed some light on what really happened. But no, this is not really a solution. Because just as I have shifted and changed in my own understanding of what happened to us and to our marriage, so has he.

So, in reality, asking the question, "What *really* happened?" (as if just one version of the truth exists, apart from either one of his or my experiences) is completely useless. The "truth" of the marriage, the "truth" of our divorce, and the "truth" behind why it ended lies not in me or him, but instead, somewhere in between. A place in the past that neither of us will ever be able to accurately conjure from our memories. And not through some fault of his or my own. But simply through the nature of time.

The idea that the experience of our marriage (from it's inception when I was just fourteen to it's demise almost twelve years later) lies safely dormant in the catacombs of the past is actually more healing to me than anything else. No one's interpretation or recollection or explanations (including my own) can ever truly affect it. It is in the past. Tucked away. Perfectly preserved. Truth and all. What matters now is... well, now. This moment.

And this moment, I am strong. I am happy. And I am grateful. For my past, for my experiences, and for my ever-changing memories.