The Stories We Tell

Don’t you hate it when you’re so exhausted yet your brain just won’t turn off? I find that it is during these times of fatigue that I often feel depressed. Shortly after dinner, I found myself in bed trying to take a nap. I was too tired to do anything but it was too early to call it a night. Instead of obeying my conscious command to sleep, my subconscious decided to scrounge up old memories…. or at least, attempt to.

See, what I realized was that most of my memories from the past aren’t anything more than a mere 1–10 second old, beat-up movie with a lot of clips missing and of poor quality. For example, the only thing I can remember from my family vacation to Washington D.C. is standing at the top of the elevator scared shitless to go down. I doubt I could tell you more than a handful of memories from high school, and even those would be incomplete and full of gaps.

This made me sad. I’ve been on this earth nearly thirty years and I feel as if I have a backpack full of memories to show for it. It made me scared to think that in another 5, 10 years maybe I won’t remember anything from that Washington D.C. trip. Do I always just have a backpack, or can I upgrade to have carry-on suitcase somehow?

Then I realized something else.

That there are a small number of memories that are extremely vivid. If I close my eyes and think about them, it feels as if it just happened yesterday. Why do some memories stick with such veracity, while others require so much brainpower just to recollect?

I thought about it.

The memories that are the strongest are the ones I’ve told stories of multiple times. I was joking with my boyfriend recently that each of us have “those ten stories.” The ones we always are itching to tell our friends and family, but we preface with, “have I told you this already?”

If you’re like me, you’re guilty of immediately quipping back: “Yes, you’ve told me this already.” You might even roll your eyes ever so slightly. Because it’s true: if you weren’t there, the story isn’t nearly as funny or scary or whatever as it was for those who actually lived it.

But.

I’ve decided.

Even if I don’t want to hear my boyfriend’s story about riding a moped around Thailand or working in a sunglasses factory for the nth time, I am going to smile, shut-up and sit there. Maybe I’ll listen, or maybe I’ll space off. But I’m not going to stop him, or anyone else who wants to tell me a story about their past.

Because memories are important. Memories are really all that we have. We should cherish them, strengthen them, and protect them. We should tell them. Over and over.