on forgetting

in which i try my hand at advice

Occasionally I get emails in response to a newsletter. Some of the emails are long and heartfelt, ruminations on a similar experience. Some are short and sweet. And some are just looking for advice. I am not an advice columnist, I make no declaration of that, and I think I am terrible at giving advice. But I will try my hardest to make the person looking for advice feel like I at least listened to them and gave it my best shot. Yesterday, I was presented a one line email, a simple question: How do I forget him?

I sat on it for a little while, really giving it some thought. I conversed with the person an bit and after feeling them out about their relationship, and with their permission, I decided to answer it here, as a newsletter.

How do I forget him?

The quick, hard answer is: I don’t think you do. You don’t forget the people you loved. There was a time when that person was your world, when you were deep in love and cherished every moment with him. You went on dates, you traveled, you had adventures together. To forget all of that would be to cut out a part of you life, and you don’t really want to do that. I know it hurts in a way to think of those good times, because we want to cling to the fact that we were good together, and it’s painful to think they no longer saw it that way. But we owe it to ourselves to remember that we were loved, we were cherished. Our heart needs that.

There are many things you will forget over time. You will forget the way his hand felt in yours. You will forget the warmth of his body as he slept next to you. You might forget his laugh. At some point when you remember things he said to you, they will come in your voice in your head, not his, because you forgot how his voice sounds. His entire being will become vague and hazy in your mind, and your heart will ache about that. When you remember the good times, he will be sort of fuzzy around the edges, a ghostly figure from your past haunting your memories.

We don’t forget. We don’t forget years of companionship, we don’t just simply erase those times from our lives. We can forget things about our past loves, we can forget their idiosyncrasies, how they sounded when they snored, the tattoos on their arms. There will come a day when you will strain to remember those things, but they will be gone, but other things will still be there. The first vacation you took together, the amazing meal you had at your favorite restaurant, the way he always made you laugh.

It hurts to remember those things at first because thinking about them is to think about you as a couple. You will long for those days, you will absolutely pine for him. But that longing fizzles out after a while. Your heart will hurt less, your tears will not be as frequent, your memories will weaken a little and not hit you like a ton of bricks every time.

You won’t ever fully forget him because he was a large part of your life. You will forget the color of his favorite jacket, how his entire face lit up when he smiled, his little tics and habits. But you can’t expect to forget him entirely. Eventually he won’t loom so large in your head, he will become a smaller and smaller piece of your day until your memories become just little puzzle pieces you can no longer fully put together because you’re missing large chunks of the puzzle. And that’s a good thing. You are healing.

Don’t actively try to forget him, that’s just an exercise in futility. Just go about your days, do things for yourself, keep your mind occupied. Eventually you will go hour and then days without thinking about him, without thinking about your lingering heartache. There will be moments when you suddenly remember, when he will come back to you with clarity, and you will experience a little ache in your heart, but the moment will be fleeting and his ghost will float into the back of your mind where it belongs.

You will not forget him. But there will come a time when you will remember without the pain. Be patient with yourself , be gentle with your memories.