By Kit B
There exists, in the deepest, darkest recesses of my cloud account, a Forgetting Box.
We all collect ephemera in our daily lives, and I have always been a pack rat. In our case, as we were separated by time and space, I collected email attachments, IMDB movie reviews, funny links and profile pictures.
This is a box where I put all my memories of you — a picture of your birthday cake shaped like the world, logs of our virtual lunch dates, our conversations about what movie to watch, Skype screen captures of the time when you explained your dislike of Whole Foods, with me trying to hold back giggles at your dead-serious expression. Goofy goodbyes and hesitant hellos, the arguments, the banter, the constant stream of everything and nothing that was in essence, us.
I keep them in a box, locked with a key I have long since thrown out.
Putting a box together isn’t easy. After all, how do you cut away your heart? First, you gather all your memories. How you met. How he really liked your smile. The way he laughed out loud at your predilection for Sting in a metal bikini. How he took his tea (two sugars, no milk) and how he mocked your dependence on coffee.
His mother’s name. His nephews’. The way his voice would deepen when he said your name. The way he would pepper his speech with Spanish in moments of extreme emotion, whether agitation or lust. The time he spent the whole of his Valentine’s Day with you and then stayed up to celebrate yours, even though he didn’t believe the hype. Those memories go in the box.
Next, you squeeze out all the hopes and dreams you’ve ever had with him. They are dead now. Withered away before they even came into fruition. No trips to a secluded cenote. No yellow Labrador in the yard. No kids with your smile and his eyes. The life you planned together turned out to be pipe dreams borne of loneliness. Those go in the box as well.
Pain comes next. You add the arguments. The cheating. The way his voice shook when he said he slept with someone else. The confession that he got someone pregnant and the tears that came after — yours and his.
After gathering all those, put them in a box — in my case, a digital one. Lock it and throw away the key — that is, compress all of it into a zip file and enter random keystrokes as a password. Make your fingers fly through the keyboard and will your mind to forget.
It wasn’t an easy decision, this incision. Like a failed suicide, I hesitated, the attempts manifesting in several unsent notes that begged for a closure you would never ever be able to give me. For an explanation that would never be enough. For an acknowledgement that, yes, it meant something to you as well. That I meant something. That I wasn’t alone in love.
Three years later, my “Forgetting Box” remains. Unlike Pandora, I am aware of what’s inside. I have never tried to resurrect its contents. I know exactly how it will ruin whatever semblance of happiness, or maybe just contentment, that I now have.
Should I have just erased everything? Perhaps. I’ve tried a couple of times. Obviously, that hasn’t stuck. It became a worry stone of sorts, the jagged edges of the box filed smooth by time and contemplation.
Funny how I now view what happened with a veneer of detachment.
Presenting: Two People Rationally Discussing Happiness While Breaking Up
A: the author
M: in his late 20’s, bespectacled Latin lover
The scene:
A: I am responsible for my unhappiness, and happiness for that matter. And you for yours. Don’t ever think that you’d make me unhappy, because that would imply I’d have no choice in the matter.
M: You say you are responsible for your own happiness as if you could turn it on and off internally. That would be great if we could do that. No one would really get hurt. But no matter how logical we may be, emotions have a mind of their own.
A: I believe happiness is a choice. It comes with contentment and gratitude for your lot in life. That’s how I’ve thought about it. It’s not dependent on another person, a thing, or even in achieving a goal. I don’t see it as a switch, either. More like a slide rule.
M: About happiness, I believe that the choice is a starting point. You have to sometimes say something consciously in order to get into the right mindset. Though happiness for me seems to be ethereal. Something you can only capture for a moment at a time and lose again and are always trying to find a way to recapture. Though, yes, I agree — if you are overall content with where you are, then the moments when you are not truly happy are not as bad.
A: Interesting. You have a very metaphysical idea of happiness. Whereas I seem to have a corporeal one. By your definition, have you ever been truly happy? How do you differentiate being truly happy from, say, not quite truly happy moments? Knowing that a truly happy state is fleeting would be kind of bittersweet, don’t you think?
On the other hand, my idea of happiness is flawed as well. A purely decision-based state of happiness is very insular, operating as a closed system but in reality is anything but. Maybe happiness is somewhere in the middle.
M: Yes, I have had moments when I felt euphoric and felt like everything in the world was right. The thing with happiness is that it is not sustainable continuously. I think if there is something or someone or something that causes you to feel happy, after a while, that effect wears off. So in a way, my idea of happiness is corporeal, because it’s basically whatever causes your body to release serotonin.
The reason I call it ethereal is because what makes people happy can change easily, and also because, a lot of times, you don’t even know how to find it. It’s rarely clearly defined, and the times that it feels it is, it dissipates.
A: I see. You’re describing happiness like a drug. Addicting, and with no regular dealer in sight. Mulling over that for a bit. Maybe we’re asking the wrong questions. What if happiness is not the point? Maybe feeling something, anything, is?
I loved you and you broke me. I don’t know if I’m capable of loving again. I don’t know if I’m capable of accepting love. I don’t trust my feelings anymore. I am afraid to feel when I shouldn’t be. I wasn’t before, not when you first met me. I’ve put up impenetrable walls that serve as both protection and prison, and it’s killing me.
So it comes to this. My final, final unsent note. You told me once that hope can choke the life out of people. And that it’s futile and selfish to try to find some convoluted way of keeping you with me. That’s what I did with you, right?
I don’t need the Forgetting Box anymore. I don’t need it to remember, neither do I need it to forget. You let me go years ago. Apparently, I’ve yet to do the same.
Dulces Sueños, M.
Ms B is a 30-something artist from the wilderness of Lower Antipolo. She loves coffee and hearing stories from strangers.
