By Sophia Quindara

I turn around to find every step I’ve taken to remember in vain, every piece of dust I’ve held onto just dust.

A good memory can be your saving grace, or the bane of your existence.

As for me — I can count the memories I have with my father on one hand. 
 

1. The department store and the purple flower dress.
2. The heavy LeapFrog toy and the nosebleed, holding a towel to my face.
3. The X-box and the Our Song music video on repeat.
4. The hospital gift shop and the Big Sister t-shirt.
5. The dimly lit room and the forever goodbye.

My lapse in memory didn’t bother me until I was 12. He’d been gone exactly eight years, but the wound finally chose to surface after being latent for most of my childhood. I grew up feeling decades older than the kids I was surrounded by, but on that day, I was a little kid who missed her father. I cried for three people.

1. The girl who wasn’t old enough to know what death meant.
2. The girl walking down the aisle alone, 20 years from then.
3. The girl who wanted to miss someone she didn’t even know.

Memories are made in neural pathways, yet mine at age four couldn’t have predicted my hatred for their incompetence now. My grief turned to guilt. I felt small, trying to claim this sorrow when others knew him better and longer than I did. I missed this person who could have been my father without really knowing who he was.

My mind sought to punish me.

Its methods were painless at first: counting four pumps of soap when I washed my hands, finding pairs of punctuation marks. I was in control, and the routine was proof of that.

Slowly, my mind learned to develop its tactic, ever so slightly, so that I never registered a difference. Turning the faucet off two times, my alarms on four times, the lights off eight times. Some things doubled in quantity, others in duration, but my actions never crossed my mind for more than a second. Like blinking my eyes, my body acted to feel right — at peace with itself.

I found comfort in the numbers, because if I could recount every moment to a digit, I could know for certain it happened. It was deeper than routine — it was ritual, and I was the only performer. The guilt was my leader, the grief was my code, and the numbers were sacred text. I created a cult: loyal to compulsions, dedicated to obsessions. Forgetting meant I’d have to confront the wrongness inside me.

I wielded my grief like a double edged sword. Each swing was a memory made to prove that I was capable. The knockback hit me in the heart, reminding me that no matter my actions now, I could never forge the memories I so desperately desired. I put the pieces I have of my father in a box. They’re concealed, but suspended. Nothing more is to be forgotten, but there’s nothing else to remember either.

I latched on to minute details: chemical formulas, the days when I re-wore outfits, my friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s cousin’s major — I pushed the capacity of my memory, finding meaning in every instance, because there was no telling what regrets I’d have in years to come. I replayed sequences in my head. I imprinted images into my eyelids. I didn’t want to feel the repentance of regret again. This was how I regulated myself.  Everything was worth remembering.

My rituals evolved past just counting. I acted to feel a sense of completion — whether that be acknowledgement or repetition. I remembered what I wrote by making holes in thin paper where I pressed the tip of my pen. I remembered to obey the letters and numbers of road signs by burning them into my vision. I remembered the meanings of words when I synced my breathing to my reading. I had gotten so used to the sensation that I didn’t register it as pain.

My rituals slowly tore a canyon between my rationale and my emotion, right where my control had once resided. I was no longer compensating for my forgetfulness, I was overcompensating to punish myself.

I was losing control of my newfound grief. I thought it to be rigid and finite, but it turned out blurry and endless. It was a cycle in three steps:

1. I clung onto memories.
2. I acted to create memories.
3. I built my life around memories.

I told myself to live with it. More so, I had to live with it. The temporary discomfort was worth the confirmation that I was remembering anything, something, everything.

I was forgetful as a kid because memory didn’t matter. When I forgot to do my reading homework, I was punished with a silent lunch. I misplaced pieces of board games, my goggles after the swimming pool, the living room TV remote. Small mistakes and even smaller consequences.

In those moments, memory meant nothing to me.

Now, in between counting and repeating, I reminded myself that I wanted a way to grieve. I wanted the punishment. But as guilt clouds my grief, I use my memory as a motive. I ask myself: how desperately do I need to remember?

I let the rituals follow me everywhere. To school, to sleep, to socialize. To the doctor’s office, where sterile air and painted murals of oceans coerced a confession out of me before I knew what I was saying. There, I put my actions into words for the first time, vocalizing my fears, finally hitting my breaking point.

Telling my doctor made me acutely aware of how I’d lost myself to the routine, unrecognizable compared to when I was ignorant. Whether or not I had wanted to reveal my practices, I did anyway out of what might have been my mind’s last ditch effort to save me from itself.

In the same room I had sat a dozen times, I cried for three reasons:

1. I wouldn’t remember him.
   
2. I need not feel guilty.
   
3. I can live with grief.
   

____________________________________________________________________________

I can count the memories I have with my father on one hand.

1. Special. We went shopping that day just the two of us.
2. Scared. It didn't hurt, but his reaction told me it should have.
3. Excited. He said that we’d soon hear this song in real life.
4. Happy. Our family was growing, but I’d still have his attention.
5. Confused. This wasn’t like the last time we were just in the hospital.

The mental pictures I see pale in comparison to the emotion I once felt. I turn around to find every step I’ve taken to remember in vain, every piece of dust I’ve held onto just dust.

What matters when making memories isn’t their longevity or their quantity, it’s the emotion they bring you. We don’t remember instances or pictures — we remember feelings.

I’ve held myself to a standard of remembering materiality. I quantify the memories themselves, like I’ve been keeping score, because I understood the feeling of correctness to be its own emotion.

So I taught myself to remember everything: log-in verification codes, my favorite coffee order, my to-do list each day. I remember the things I want to forget too – two sentence horror stories, failed test scores, the final pages of my favorite book.

It’s not because they’re memorable, but because the feeling is. The satisfaction, the fear, the pride, the anger.

I had been so consumed by my rituals that I let them isolate me and take away my liberty of emotion. The rightness of rituals decided for me what was worth remembering – but the power was ultimately mine. I decided what was worth my mental space, not the guilt that I had been using to dictate my grief; the action was painful enough without me inflicting more torment on myself. Even though I wouldn’t remember my father, I didn’t need guilt – or memory – to grieve.

My memory wouldn’t be the death of me, but it wouldn’t be the life of me either. ■