I Can Forget What You Did To Me, But Not How You Made Me Feel

It is said that we will only remember forever the things that make us vibrate, that make us run cold, or that create a storm of emotion – we can never forget them.

You shaped me, you were something like a storm that rummaged through my insides and managed to find me, such a storm that knew it would bring the happiest moments that no one has given me until now Has.

But now that the time has passed, it is likely that I will begin to forget. To forget who you were, how I was with you and how we felt when we were together. It seems logical that you will become another life experience, another step on the path of learning. Nevertheless there will be something that stays there and that I always carry with me: the warmth when it was cold, the cold when I needed something against the heat and every beat of your heart.

The mistakes blur, the shudders show who we are

To think of ourselves is to think of time and space: what were we? What are we? What will we be And it seems like the only answer to that is our memory. Memory is above all a form of forgetting, which Benedetti already knew with complete certainty.

We are what we remember and we remember what shook all parts of the body until they could no longer be seen. The rest of the events that have happened or are happening to us are lost or confused in our minds, which sometimes goes so far that we get to the point where we don’t know what actually happened: we remember just how we felt in that moment.

The day will come when the mistakes we made or someone made us just go away and leave us with a shudder. The scar from that bygone era makes us what we are today: This pile of broken mirrors defines us, shapes us, as well as this small dose of happiness that they made us believe we were really alive.

You are already a feeling from the past

From what has already been described it is quite clear that we cannot completely get rid of the past. This is the reason why people like you who were once part of my presence, but are no longer so, still remain in my life in the form of memories. Memories that are no longer real or tangible, but that remain in the form of emotions.

Our feelings were and will remain worth it for me and also for you, who are currently reading this text. If someone has managed to turn your stomach, then you will never be able to forget the feeling of what you had in that moment: You, that person, are no longer what you once were, there is only this essence, that touched us inside.

They may have hurt you like me; a verything what hurts us also once caressed before. And the pain, the grief passes, but the caress continues, it will always be there with you.

I say thank you for the pain you caused me

Sometimes the heart weeps so much that you feel like you will never forget the grief you are exposed to. Even so, it is wiser than we think if we let it be: the heart is able to erase the bad memories, preserve the good ones and overcome the past.

When I say that the heart is able to erase things, I don’t mean that some traces aren’t left. It’s about knowing that we have accepted the past and that we have learned to live with what happened when the pain subsides. That way, we get to the point where we’d like to say thank you for falling, since that’s the only way we’ve learned to get up again and will from now on appreciate standing on both feet more.

There is no point in reliving situations in our head over and over again: the only way to look into the future is to go beyond the sum of events, to get to the feelings and to get to know each other from all perspectives that life before us.

Images courtesy of Davide Ortu, Karina Chavin, Gustavo Aimar