Sometimes, I Wish I Could Forget

Time is relative. When you're 14 years old, the last 4 years may have seemed like the longest, best, worst, most important, most painful, what-ever-it-is years of your life. Then, as a 50 year old, your life has been steady, settled for a while and the last four years seem unimportant, a nonentity. A senior in high school may think that the year can't go any slower- that it seems like a lifetime before they will graduate when, in the big picture, this year is only one tiny fraction of their life. We all live and die, and go unnoticed by many. four years mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, but can define someones entire life.

Now, take a moment to think about the last four years of your life. Think about what they meant, what they did, how they changed you as a person. Think about what things would be like had they never happened, what you would be like if they simply disappeared. One moment they were part of your history, a chunk of your memory, and the next, they were just gone. It would be as if a part of your life never even existed, you suddenly rewinded. this is what happened to Naomi Porter.

She hit her head on slippery steps and in a split second, four years disappeared. Anything from after the age of 12 was simply erased from her memory- her mothers affair, her parents divorce, her boyfriend Ace, her best friend Will, her love for yearbook, her love for tennis, her ability to drive, her lost virginity, her new house, her half sister- everything. The most eventful, vital years of her life were forgotten. Her world had become a mystery- why did she drop that class? Why did she fall for Ace? Where did she wear that dress? How did she have her hair? Who was Will, really, to her? She begins to search for clues to piece together her history with. She had to trust people to tell her pieces of her life, and to tell them honestly. Naomi's life became a complete nightmare of question and wondering. At the same time, though, her amnesia had given her a fresh start. At sixteen years old, she had basically no past. She could choose to simply start over, be a whole new person. She didn't remember the old one, and no one would know that it ever existed. When Naomi finally does remember everything, she hides it. She doesn't tell anyone that her memory is back because, she doesn't want it to be. Starting over felt good, she didn't want to face the reality of her real life.

This book, Memories of a Teenage Amnesiac, makes me think so deeply about what it's like to forget. Is it better to forget your mistakes? To live with no history? To start with a clean slate? Or, is the point of life to live with the decisions that you make? At one point in the book, Naomi comments that she thinks perhaps the only reason that her significant other, James liked her is because she has no past, because the present and the future can be what she chooses, what she wants them to be. There are times in my life, and I'm sure yours too, when I think that nothing could ever get worse. When I feel like just giving up on everything and everyone. At such a time, I would kill to erase my mistakes. I would literally do anything to go back in time and just start over. But, maybe everything happens for a reason (I know, that sounds corny and stupid and over-used) but, perhaps it is true. Perhaps, every thing you do happens for a reason. Every mistake you make is meant to be nothing more or less than a mistake. I often wonder, should Naomi start over? Should she take this golden opportunity to be a whole new girl? Or, should she accept the person she was and live with it, with what she was supposed to be, for better or worse. What would each of us, as flawed human beings do?