The Things that I Remember

I am forgetful.  I wake up in the morning with a list of to-do's, but by the time I get around to finishing one, the rest have already floated away from my consciousness.  There are so many other things to worry about... school, work, boyfriend, family, friends, time alone to decompress, repeat.  Something as simple as running a load of laundry can slip my mind, only to return moments before I crawl into bed for the evening.  Of course, that load of laundry had to be done, and the importance of that to-do was more prominent in my mind than my sleeping roommate down the hall.  In remembering one thing, I forget the other.  My waking moments are spent attempting to remember all the important things at once--but the honest truth is that I can't even remember the most simplest of them because my thoughts are stretched too then and cannot collect densely enough on any particular task.

I do not, however, have any trouble remembering what it felt like the feel the flesh beneath your shirt for the first time--and how that embrace was so incredibly different from the second because we had fallen in love with each other by the time we touched again.  I can remember how you scrubbed furiously at your teeth with your tooth brush, how you cried behind my back when I sang, how you were there waiting with an open towel as I stepped out of the shower, how you left me, defeatedly crying behind the steering wheel of my car because I told you to.

These things I do not forget.  Why my mind holds on to these things but discombobulates the things that are supposed to get me through the day, I don't  know.  Perhaps because those things are insignificant  Whether or not I get that load of laundry done will make no difference in the inevitable future.  Perhaps the only thing that really matters is that I loved you, truly--and asking you to walk away from me that night broke my heart.  Those are the kinds of things that I carry with me, because the waning sanity and waxing emotional instability are the things that make me into the particular type of human that I am.