in lieu of forgiveness, there's forgetting

on forgetting as a coping skill

People are fond of saying forgive and forget and I think what they mean by forgive is to forgive the act, forgive the transgression against you, but not necessarily forgive the person. While I have decided I’m not that into forgiveness in my specific case, I have apparently taken the forget part to heart; I may not have forgotten the hurt, the anger, the audacity, but I am in the process of forgetting the person.

I have forgotten what his touch felt like. I can no longer recall the feeling I’d get as he slipped his hand into mine, as he touched my face or caressed my shoulders. It’s foreign to me, the sensation of being touched by him.

I have almost forgotten his voice. I remember it being loud and boisterous but I can’t recall exactly what he sounded like. When I try to remember things he said to me, the voice in my head is filled with static, like trying to tune in an AM radio station that’s far away. I hear something now and then - the California inflection in his voice every time he said dude - but it’s mostly ghostly noises that permeate my brain where his voice should be.

I forgot what it was like to wake up next to him, to fall asleep in the crook of his right arm, to reach out for him in the night when bad dreams forced me awake. I forgot his laugh, which used to ring out in the house, a sound that filled me with joy. Now I struggle to even think of something he would have laughed at. The last year of our relationship was mirthless, I probably started forgetting his laugh long before he left.

I don’t know how I’ve forgotten what he looks like. I remember things like his favorite outfits, his ever present Converse high tops, Hawaiian shirt, cut-off Dickies. But the outfit stands there in my thoughts without a body, just a set of clothes where the person has disappeared from them. His hair was blonde, his eyes bluish gray, but I can not describe to you the rest of his features until I look at the hundreds of pictures I have of him and I point to each one as if to say, hey you look familiar, but I can’t place you.

I forgot how safe he made me feel. I know it was there once. I felt secure and comfortable until I didn’t and when I lost those things I lost everything about him. I lost the shape of his face, the definition on his hands, the love in his eyes. I have forgotten how he sounds when a sings, which he often did in the car much to my amusement. I have forgotten that too, the pure joy of having fun with someone you love, of being your most vulnerable self without care. I have lost that sense of comfort that comes with living a life where you are cared for and cherished.

I have forgotten so much about him and I don’t know that I wanted to do that. There is care, there is love in those memories, and as they slowly dissipate I am losing my sense of self, because I wrapped up everything I had in feeling loved. Forgetting his physical characteristics isn’t the worst thing, but with that, everything else has become a blur, a smudged painting.

Maybe it’s my fault I’m forgetting so much of him. I started taking down the artwork he hung in the hallway, large, framed posters of his favorite movies. I started removing stuff from the walls of the bedroom, the remnants of us, of things we picked out together. His fingerprints are everywhere, in every decoration, in the way the rooms are set up, ground into the woodwork of this house. It would have been easier if he took this stuff when he left. Now I’m the one dismantling it, and with each piece of artwork I give away, which each videogame I sell, I’m throwing pieces of him away. I shredded some of the cards he gave me and as I did so I felt him escaping piece by piece from my mind. First his laughter, then his touch, then the shape of his face, the smell of his vape, the sound of ice shaking around in his Diet Coke. I struggle with those things now.

I’ve been listening to “Eucalyptus” by the National a lot. It’s a song about a couple splitting up their belongings as they split up their relationship. I cried the first time I heard it, the words reaching into me to form a knot in my heart.

What about the rainbow eucalyptus?
What about the instruments?
What about the cowboy junkies?
What about the Afghan Whigs?

We didn’t really split things up so much as he absconded with things I would have liked to keep, and he left me with shared items that would become my problem, my burden to discard of. When I look back now on the day he left, I think of all the things I didn’t say. What about the records, what about the hockey jersey…. I try to envision myself saying these words to him but I can no longer see him clearly in my mind. I have forgotten that much. I see his red sweatshirt, his khaki pants, his high tops, but there is a void around them, an emptiness that comes from having forgotten.

I don’t think forgive and forget is something everyone should aim for. I think in my case it’s forgive or forget. I have chosen to not forgive. The only thing left to do is forget.