Revised and Published "Sometimes I Wish I Could Forget"

So, this is the New and Improved version of this:

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 at the same time, 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 a piece of your history, a chunk of your memory, part of what made you you, and the next thing you know, they were just gone. It would be as if a part of your life never even existed, you suddenly re-winded. 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 and 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? Did her father have a girlfriend? Did she like the girlfriend? She begins to search for clues to piece together her history with. She had to trust people to tell her pieces of her past, 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, why face the reality of her messy but true life if she didn’t have to?

This book, Memories of a Teenage Amnesiac, makes me think 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 when I think that nothing could ever get worse. When I feel as if a mid-life crisis is occuring 30 years premature and all I want to do is just give up on everything and everyone. I would kill to erase my mistakes. I would do anything to go back in time and just start over. But maybe everything does, despite how cliche this may sound, happen for a reason because if it didn’t, there would be no argument as to why Naomi shouldn’t forget. She just would, there would be no hesitation because there would be no reason why she shouldn’t.

In sixth grade, I said something awful about one of my closest friends that I’ve had for as long as I can remember. The thing is, I didn’t even mean what I said about her, and she overheard. I remember what made me feel the worst about it was that when I called to apologize and tell her it didn’t mean it, I didn’t want to lose her, yadda, yadda, ya she wasn’t angry-- just really hurt, sad. And, I’ll never forget how her voice sounded because I’d never ever heard it that way before and that made everything a million times worse. I remember in that moment, hating myself more than I ever have before, being so ashamed of what I’d done that still to this day, the only person that knows is my mom. I remember a list of things I would do to take it back going through my head. A stream of items or words or people or foods or anything I would give up if I could go back in time and have her back.

Anything.
Anything to loosen the tight, dry knot in the back of my throat or fill the empty, aching hole in my stomach.
I had become desperate like anyone in a similar situation would be.

But, I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do because I’m only human and I don’t have a fairy god-mother or Hermione’s time turner. Because I’d done something that so many had done before me and so many will do after me- made a possibly life-altering mistake. And I regretted it deeply but, like the others, I would have to live with that.

So what’s the upside to this? Why, if everyone wants so badly what Naomi has the opportunity to have, should she not take it? Because I made up with that friend and she’s still at my house practically everyday eating my families supply of cookies. Because, while what I said will always be there, we still have our run-around-like-4-year-olds-on-a-summer-afternoon kind of juvenile relationship. Because, since that day, I have tried as hard as I possibly can to not say a single bad thing about a friend behind their back, and it’s worked for the most part. Because I learned an important lesson in a painfully hard way but because of that, I’ll never forget it. And, if I did, who knows how many times I would’ve made that mistake again. Sometimes I think when you do something wrong, you just get a strike and a bit of luck and everything is OK. But, if you forget and keep on doing that thing, you’re out of luck and strikes and nothing turns out OK. Because, “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” and though this quote is overused in my writing that’s only it’s so true and so, so, vitally important to remember.