I am a memory growing ‘old’
As I sat on the edge of my bed, wrapped in a towel facing the mirror, I looked at my 23 year old body and studied my face. All this time gone, the time it took to get here, memories of experiences and relationships; exists only in my head. Did anything really happen the way I perceived it? Did any of it happen at all? The only evidence of time passing is my ageing body, yours and photographs. But what if ageing was just a warped filter we were taught to look through? It’s as if the only self we were taught to be conscious of was our physical one, decaying through linear time. I feel as though my consciousness is evolving and learning, though not ageing like my body. “Who I am” is just a memory of how I’ve responded to “events”.
When I was younger, I would fantasise about what it would be like to be a certain age, which most people do. But now that I am that age, I have come to realise that we are not however many years old. We are merely a moment, whichever moment that may be, in time. A blink, as some have coined it. And since to remember a moment it needs to have passed, to remember “who we are” it needs to have been us at one point- this is why we are just a memory. Time is strange, it takes so long and it goes so fast, and once you’ve spent it you can never get it back. A physical moment dissolves into a clump of words and images and opinions and feelings. So tangible, malleable, and out of control. I can’t help but feel that in order to upkeep who I think I am, I need to be recreating that version of myself in every waking moment.
