It’s incredible how quickly you can scrub someone from your memory. As if they never existed at all. Out of sight, out of mind. There’s a lot in that. What is a friendship? A love affair? Doesn’t it rely more on familiarity than anything else? Have you ever had a holiday romance for instance? They rarely last. Yes, it’s intense when you see each other every day, each desperate night but change the scenery again and it can be like it never happened in the first place, entombed in your mind perhaps but usually only the 217
best bits, edited the way you’d like to remember, you more beautiful, him more romantic, the sex better, you know how it goes.
I don’t mean erasing someone completely when I say scrubbing from memory. I mean just that. Like a really burnt pan or a dried smudge of paint on the skirting board. You can take a certain amount of it off easily, leaving a shadow of its former self. You notice it now and again for a while until it just becomes part of the landscape. You can’t remember it having been any other way. One day you will buy a new pan or a tin of paint and the shadow will be forgotten, without even realizing there was something to remember.
Of course all these riddles relate to me, although the holiday romance happened when I was seventeen and I lied, we didn’t even sleep together. I was still a virgin and hesitant of any boy that knew it. Don’t underestimate the conquest involved here, I suppose I could compare it to an exposed inch of smooth hairless skin to a swarm of mosquitos. A virgin.
Funny how much I valued that at the time, carried around with me like a badge from the girl guides.
Later, when I married the first man who treated like a china doll on the outside yet a child that needed to be protected and disciplined by her dominant father on the inside, I felt cheated. This image of pureness I self-righteously prided myself with now makes me feel sick. It’s no wonder no-one wanted me for my mind. It was full of toss.
I keep wandering off the point again. Let’s get back to Eve. Eve was fairly popular once. Now and again she’d be the life and soul of the party. Eve learnt the hard way how to be comfortable with herself. It often meant some people felt uncomfortable around her but you can’t have it all. What’s the point of being if people around you are false, trying to portray an image of someone they’re not. Someone they’d 218
perhaps like to be but actually aren’t and never will be. It’s ludicrous really. It’s as if everyone is playing a game, no-one quite sure of the rules. Who makes the rules? Us? Society? Who knows. All I know is it’s fucking stupid.
Eve likes to think she leaves a mark on people. Isn’t that everyone’s hope for themselves? To be memorable. It’s an illusion. We aren’t memorable.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying you can’t make an impression but things fade over time, like the holiday romance. You have no control of how you exist in another person’s memory either. You could have morphed into a completely different entity.
Where have I gone? In those people’s minds I’ve left behind. Where do they picture me, if at all. What pictures will spring to mind when I come up in conversation. What will I look like or be saying. This lack of control unnerves me. I know I am being talked about. Discussed. Analyzed. Prayed for. Pitied.
Laughed at. Dissected. All of these things by different people, or perhaps the same people at different times. People who never really knew me in the first place. Yet in amongst all the words, images, stories, I have, in essence, been forgotten. I exist for them now in the past. A relic. If I suddenly appeared infront of them, things would be as if I never left but to exist in another place is like never having existed at all. Eve, they will say, yes it rings a bell, I think maybe I once knew her.
Was I a fool to think anyone would miss me? There is a gulf between saying I miss you and actually doing so. What do we even mean by the word ‘miss’? Is it not simply a break in the routine, ‘I miss going out with you on a Thursday night’, meaning little more than ‘oh I’ll have to find someone else to go to the pub with now’ or ‘I miss popping in for coffee’
meaning ‘now that was a convenient stop for a brew 219
and some gossip-mongering’. I miss you rarely means
‘you’ve left an aching gap in my life’ or even ‘I miss talking with you’ or ‘you can’t be replaced’. You can.
Sorry to disappoint you but usually, you really can.
I’m overly sentimental and if I thought anyone really felt like that, felt that I really was irreplaceable in their life, would I have left? Yes, you know the answer to that Eve.
You did.