Just for fun I thought I’d post a story just finished!
Rachael's Memories
People tell me memories are bitter things; tear stains smearing across one’s past, but when they think I’m not listening, their conversation always begins with those two words I have never been able to pair “I remember.” Because I don’t.
Oh I remember some things, such as my name and how to tie my shoes but I have no real memories. Each night it is as if my memory is wiped clean and I am left with nothing. Nothing but a white fog like the residue of chalk left on the chalkboard of my recollection.
Memories may be bitter things, things of teardrops and past regrets but they are sweet also. I know. I have seen people’s faces light up as they sit before the warming glow of a fire on a chill night recollecting some sweet memory.
Sometimes I wonder what I felt in those past days; Joy? Sorrow? And why, what made me feel that way? What happened in those days? How I long to have the memories of those days within my grasp. Others, they take for granted those memories, they know that they will always be able to look back, to pull from their recollections some dried rose with its bittersweet smell of bygone days. So they take for granted those memories. I would not.
No matter how much I have longed for memories in the past I have not, until this moment, realized how desperately I want them. Not for any memories I think I may have had, but for the memories I have made in this day, because I know, by tomorrow I shall lose them.
We sit together, William and I, and I wonder how I can tell him. Tell him that by tomorrow I shall have forgotten all this? Tell him that I shall in the morrow look at him blankly and say “William who?”
I lean against his shoulder and tears blur my eyes but I will not let them fall. Somehow in this one day, this one day that I can remember, this one day that I shall soon forget, I met William, and suddenly my past didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what had happened or who I had been, only this moment, the now, had mattered, but evening had come, and I would soon have to say goodbye.
Most people when they come to goodbye have the reassurance that they would have a memory to cling to ever after, I didn’t even have that. No matter how hard I cling, no matter how hard I clutch on to the memory of today, I know it will slip through my fingers like a snowball melting back into water, and I knew I would have to tell him.
How silly it must seem to you that I should find it so hard to tell him, he who I have felt like I
could tell everything in the world and he would understand, it wasn’t that I was afraid but I was clinging to a feeling. A feeling of normality.
I had felt like the fairytale princess who knew that her love would last forever, and somehow I still feel like that, I know what somehow I shall always love William even though I forget everything about him (how impossible that seems!). I reveled in this thought of a feeling lasting forever, in thinking that “tomorrow and the next day and the day after and always I shall remember this” and now I had to shatter my pretty illusions and face the truth that tomorrow I should remember nothing…I never did.
Once I started speaking the words came easier than I had imagined they would, so did the tears, I felt like a Mary Sue as they trickled down my face.
“Rachael” He said, brushing his hand against my cheek
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember this day, because we shall make memories together all of the days of our lives and you may forget them as they pass away, but I shall always remember.”
I wanted to believe his words, believe that even though I remembered not he would keep this memory and somehow make me remember.
Somehow after that we said goodnight, and somehow I went home.
I tried to remember. Desperately I tried, but in the morning it was all gone. I had no memories of yesterday, its joys or its sorrows; my memory was empty, wiped clean in the night. There was nothing. Then I saw the letter waiting for me on the table. I opened the white envelope in wonderment, but instead of the sheet of paper with black written words that I expected to find a pile of pictures fell into my hands. Pictures from yesterday. Pictures of me and William. Like bittersweet memories in a physical form they lay in my hands. But still I did not remember. A tiny spark of remembrance seemed to ignite in my mind, it is true, a tiny glimmer of candlelight in a dark empty room.
While I stared at the photos in my hands a knocking came at the door. I stood still listening, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t move to open the door but somehow I couldn’t. the door opened and footsteps came towards me and suddenly a man had taken my hand.
“Rachael” he was saying “Rachael, do you remember?”
I turned and looked at him then I shook my head. “I don’t know who you are.”
He had been prepared for me to say this yet the heartbreak in his face was enough to show that clearly all the preparation in the world could not be enough to hear someone you love say this. “I don’t know you.”
He lifted my hand to his lips, and gently kissing it he said “Rachael, I love you.” gently, softly as if stating a fact, not pleading a case. I stared at my hand held within his and looked up into his face.
Then I remembered.
People tell me memories are bitter things; tear stains smearing across one’s past, but when they think I’m not listening, their conversation always begins with those two words I have never been able to pair “I remember.” Because I don’t.
Oh I remember some things, such as my name and how to tie my shoes but I have no real memories. Each night it is as if my memory is wiped clean and I am left with nothing. Nothing but a white fog like the residue of chalk left on the chalkboard of my recollection.
Memories may be bitter things, things of teardrops and past regrets but they are sweet also. I know. I have seen people’s faces light up as they sit before the warming glow of a fire on a chill night recollecting some sweet memory.
Sometimes I wonder what I felt in those past days; Joy? Sorrow? And why, what made me feel that way? What happened in those days? How I long to have the memories of those days within my grasp. Others, they take for granted those memories, they know that they will always be able to look back, to pull from their recollections some dried rose with its bittersweet smell of bygone days. So they take for granted those memories. I would not.
No matter how much I have longed for memories in the past I have not, until this moment, realized how desperately I want them. Not for any memories I think I may have had, but for the memories I have made in this day, because I know, by tomorrow I shall lose them.
We sit together, William and I, and I wonder how I can tell him. Tell him that by tomorrow I shall have forgotten all this? Tell him that I shall in the morrow look at him blankly and say “William who?”
I lean against his shoulder and tears blur my eyes but I will not let them fall. Somehow in this one day, this one day that I can remember, this one day that I shall soon forget, I met William, and suddenly my past didn’t matter. It didn’t matter what had happened or who I had been, only this moment, the now, had mattered, but evening had come, and I would soon have to say goodbye.
Most people when they come to goodbye have the reassurance that they would have a memory to cling to ever after, I didn’t even have that. No matter how hard I cling, no matter how hard I clutch on to the memory of today, I know it will slip through my fingers like a snowball melting back into water, and I knew I would have to tell him.
How silly it must seem to you that I should find it so hard to tell him, he who I have felt like I
could tell everything in the world and he would understand, it wasn’t that I was afraid but I was clinging to a feeling. A feeling of normality.
I had felt like the fairytale princess who knew that her love would last forever, and somehow I still feel like that, I know what somehow I shall always love William even though I forget everything about him (how impossible that seems!). I reveled in this thought of a feeling lasting forever, in thinking that “tomorrow and the next day and the day after and always I shall remember this” and now I had to shatter my pretty illusions and face the truth that tomorrow I should remember nothing…I never did.
Once I started speaking the words came easier than I had imagined they would, so did the tears, I felt like a Mary Sue as they trickled down my face.
“Rachael” He said, brushing his hand against my cheek
“It doesn’t matter if you don’t remember this day, because we shall make memories together all of the days of our lives and you may forget them as they pass away, but I shall always remember.”
I wanted to believe his words, believe that even though I remembered not he would keep this memory and somehow make me remember.
Somehow after that we said goodnight, and somehow I went home.
I tried to remember. Desperately I tried, but in the morning it was all gone. I had no memories of yesterday, its joys or its sorrows; my memory was empty, wiped clean in the night. There was nothing. Then I saw the letter waiting for me on the table. I opened the white envelope in wonderment, but instead of the sheet of paper with black written words that I expected to find a pile of pictures fell into my hands. Pictures from yesterday. Pictures of me and William. Like bittersweet memories in a physical form they lay in my hands. But still I did not remember. A tiny spark of remembrance seemed to ignite in my mind, it is true, a tiny glimmer of candlelight in a dark empty room.
While I stared at the photos in my hands a knocking came at the door. I stood still listening, I couldn’t understand why I didn’t move to open the door but somehow I couldn’t. the door opened and footsteps came towards me and suddenly a man had taken my hand.
“Rachael” he was saying “Rachael, do you remember?”
I turned and looked at him then I shook my head. “I don’t know who you are.”
He had been prepared for me to say this yet the heartbreak in his face was enough to show that clearly all the preparation in the world could not be enough to hear someone you love say this. “I don’t know you.”
He lifted my hand to his lips, and gently kissing it he said “Rachael, I love you.” gently, softly as if stating a fact, not pleading a case. I stared at my hand held within his and looked up into his face.
Then I remembered.
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Now I thought I was being so original with this story, until Mom told me there was a movie with that exact same plotline! Geesh stealing a girl’s plot! Every good plot’s taken! But it really doesn’t matter to me if there was a movie made just like it, I wrote this story in my own style, which is completely different from anybody else’s so who cares if it has the same plotline as half a dozen movies? Not me!
