The Memories that Remain
What I’ve been holding onto from different ages, and what I’m ready to let go
Inspired by Megan Stielstra’s The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, in which each section is preceded with a recounting of specific memories attached to her corresponding age.
4 — My first memory: I’m holding my father’s hand as we head into the local liquor store. The lady behind the cash register gives me a lollipop. I am loved.
In Catholic preschool, I take a bite of our pretzel snack before we say grace. I cry, scream, “God doesn’t love me!” I am shamed.
I can read before all the other children. I am told this makes me smart.
In church, sitting on the kneeler, using the pew as my pretend piano, drumming my little sausage fingers across the wood seat. The woman seated behind my family, smiling at me. I look to my parents for guidance; they are staring ahead, stone faced, they are not reprimanding me. Then my mother leans into my father and whispers. He picks me up and carries me out of the church. “Where are we going?” I ask loudly as the priest continues his sermon at the front of the room. At the car I’m put on my stomach, my dress pushed up and my tights down, and spanked. I scream, I cry, I don’t know why this is happening to me. No one even warned me I was being bad.
5 — My mom sits with me and does flashcards of new words as I lay in bed. We go up to 100 different words. If I mess up, we start over.
6 — I’m at my grandmother’s house when I dump a box of crayons on my younger brother’s head. Some of the shavings enter his mouth and he sputters them out. I feel guilty, but I don’t say anything. No one knows this happens except the two of us.
7 — I tell a friend she doesn’t deserve to have a slumber party. She cries and tells the teacher. When she reprimands me, I cry even harder and longer than my friend.
I am tested and placed in the gifted program. I’m told this makes me special.
On a school field trip, a boy keeps daring me to kiss him on the cheek and I keep acquiescing until I get bored.
8 — I bring flashcards with me on a driving vacation — the seven wonders of the world, the states and capitals. I ignore the scenery. I read until I feel nauseous.
9 — A few of my friends are mean to me at school and my mom sits on the edge of my bed at night, her arm across my torso, until I tell her what’s wrong. At school, the girls are even meaner to me for tattling.
10 — I can’t fall asleep. I start listening to the radio as soft as it will go without being completely silent — top 10 countdowns, Love Line. I hit the “sleep” button every 50 minutes until I finally drift off.
11 — I slap a friend across the face in the classroom. When she cries and tells me it hurt, I think, “that wasn’t even that bad.”
I kick a boy in the ribs in the classroom. He goes to the nurse. My friends tell me to apologize but I can’t. I never get in trouble for these things, because I am usually a nice, quiet girl.
I compete with one other girl to get the most stickers on my name tag for getting As and 100s on our quizzes.
I start to take off my clothes at night, under the covers, to see what being naked against the sheets feels like.
12 — I’m on a family trip to Italy. I get my haircut, my ears pierced. I’m starting to feel like an adult. Then, jet lagged, I wet the bed. “Did you get your period?” my mom asks. “No,” I’m embarrassed to tell her. I drink warm milk and eat crunchy toast with Nutella every morning, and sit at the dinner table every night as the adults laugh and drink wine and I smile as if I belong there. An uncle tells me the shorts my mother bought me for this trip are too short. I hear the song “I’m Horny” and ask my dad what it means and he tells me to “think about it” without giving me any clues. I think about animals with horns and try to understand.
13 — I do finally get my period. I do finally learn what horny means.
I see photos of myself and for the first time I worry I might be fat.
14 — Suddenly, I eat too much.
15 — I have my first boyfriend, my first kiss.
I challenge myself to go 24 hours without eating anything. On a night my parents go out I ladle freshly made minestrone soup into the sink so it looks like I ate some. As an Italian, this is my weakest moment.
My boyfriend excitedly proclaims I’m so skinny he can’t take it.
My boobs grow. Too fast. I go from nothing to a DD in one summer. So much that I have stretch marks and I’m too embarrassed to wear a tank top.
A male friend mimes putting a hand up the front of my shirt.
16 — Another boyfriend. Oh, this is what love is.
17 — Heartbreak.
Another boy takes me out on a date but pulls into a parking lot instead of driving to the movies like we had agreed and points to the backseat.
Yet another boy takes me to the movies and puts his hand on my sweater without even kissing me. Years later, he will ask for a favor on LinkedIn, as if I would ever forget.
I drink. I kiss boys at parties. I do what they tell me to do. I am directionless. This is all I am good for, I reason.
I get all 4s and 5s on 7 different AP tests.
18–21 — More of the same.
21 — I graduate college a year early. I don’t want to repeat my senior year of high school again. I’m anxious to get out. To go anywhere. On graduation day I wear several different chords indicating achievement like a decorated general.
I end up in New York. I have another boyfriend. A job, another job, a freelance gig, a blog. Parties, cab rides, late night subway transfers, walking home with a slice of pizza in hand. An apartment on Roosevelt Island, an apartment in Queens, two apartments in Brooklyn.
25 — I no longer have a boyfriend. I leave New York. I’m back to where I started.
I crash on the couch of a male friend after a party where I smoke weed out of an empty can of PBR. When his girlfriend gets up to pee after they have sex in the other room, he sits next to me and calls me a temptress. I’m too close to passing out to meet his lips. Eventually his girlfriend returns from the bathroom and I’m able to sleep in peace.
I date, but it only makes me angry, bored, and more lonely than before.
A man goes down on me the first day of my period. He tells me to relax and I finally do.
Another man gives me a bite of weed cookie and goes down on me and it’s longer and more incredible than I’ve ever experienced before. I decide going down on a woman is what separates the men from the boys and won’t accept anything less.
I see a therapist for a bit, who tells me a man won’t solve my problems.
I meet my husband. Ah, there he is. This is who was meant for me. Each new thing I learn about him is something wonderful.
27 — Engaged.
29 — Married. New job.
30 — Buy a house. Stop birth control. Nothing.
31 — Stop drinking.
32 — Start hormones.
33 — Stop trying. Therapy again. Start and stop drinking again.
34 — Have the conversations I need to have. Forgive the people I need to forgive, starting with myself. Begin, in a pandemic, truly living.
Amanda ReCupido is a writer living in the Chicagoland area. Follow her on Twitter @amandarecupido.
