(no subject)
Photo albums make me feel unbearably sad...especially really old photo albums because the experience is then like looking at picture after picture of dead people in a neat little book set with lace and tied with a rosy pink bow. The photographer immortalizes them on film, capturing them in a moment when they are teeming with feeling and thoughts and life. By the time I get to thumb through them, though, the subjects of the photos have either passed on or become so full of years that they've forgotten every last one of them, and they need the photographs with names of the subjects etched on the backs to remind them to remember. All photographs do is bring back memories, bad or good memories, it doesn't matter because reminescing is always sad. The people and pets you loved, the experiences you want to live over again and the ones you wished you could forget -- I can't just look at a picture of someone that I loved and lost without wishing I had never looked at the picture at all, that I had destroyed it so that I would never be reminded and eventually, their images, burnt into my memory now would fade forever. Remembering always hurts me: what made me happy then only makes me hyper-aware of the absence of that feeling now. I don't know why everyone is so obsessed with preserving memories, making moments last forever -- all I want is to forget. I can't be happy -- ever -- until I can forget. There's nothing sad about losing one's memory; there can't possibly be anything sad about being able to be at peace. I want to forget...more than anything I want to forget. I want people and animals I love to be with me now, but as soon as they die, I want to forget them. I don't ever want to look at someone I love who loves me too and know that some day I'm going to lose them. These scars make me remember everything and looking at them, being reminded of everyone I've lost, everything I've tried to do but couldn't, every time I've failed, looking at them now hurts me a million times more than inflicting them then. But I keep doing it because I need so badly to hurt sometimes that I don't care; and some day I'm going to look at a photo of me, clad in black, with such a forced smile on my face, and I'm going to remember that feeling too.