(no subject)
What's this, way in the back corner? A long-forgotten playlist from a different era.
I blow off the dust and press play.
The decibels pour in, seeming to simultaneously freeze time and completely overwhelm. I am a different person. A being equally forgotten and coated with the dust of time marching steadily forward.
I am suspended in euphoria. Wrapped in a lightness and optimism that seems unrecognizable, yet hold the tinge of familiarity. Like watching an unapologetically self-indulgent retrospective documentary of an idealized time.
But I'm not alone.
The memory is haunted. Not fully my own. There is a now unwelcome presence. A divested partner. A cold and crippling darkness that questions my ownership of my own memories.
Time marches on. It's impossible to go back. And I don't want to. But sometimes it's fun to remember. To pick up pieces of the past and hold them close. To try on ridiculous clothes from high school. To look at old photos and laugh. To queue up that go-to incendiary summer playlist and feel young, alive and invincible all over again.
But the past is shattered and spoiled. Not what it once was. What once made it seem the very best has decomposed over the years, now lingering as a fetid corruption.
Try as I might, I can't extract a pure and unadulterated fragment of myself from these memory triggers. I can love the melodies as they flood my senses, measure by measure. I can remember, laugh and smile. But I'm never alone.
And the beat goes on...