soopastryheart

If memories could be erased from queue, they wouldn’t be called memories in the first place. Instead, a more appropriate title would be “singular events that can be immediately forgotten and never mentioned ever again.” But that’s not how memories work. And as one of life’s cruelest ironies, when it comes to memories, we find ourselves desperately clinging on to the fondest of them, while hopelessly pleading for the awful ones to leave and never return.

And I don’t know how some memories lie dormant for years, some for decades, until a trigger unleashes a relentless vomit of sights, scenes, smells, sounds, and emotions. I don’t know how they seem to work like that, how sometimes, you can’t remember something that happened a week, or a few hours prior, but others can come flooding back to you with an intensity that seems to be immune to time.

The other day at the gym (I say things like this now), I was about five minutes into a lackluster session on the elliptical machine, debating whether or not to jump off for a “lack of energy” (i.e. didn’t want to do it), when I found myself staring squarely at a familiar face from the past, a face that I had not seen since I had graduated from high school. He had gone to the rival school in my hometown, a place so small that you couldn’t flick a booger without hitting someone you knew. We had plenty of mutual friends, hung out a handful of times, but weren’t close enough to keep in touch after graduation. And in honesty, I had forgotten all about him.

We were 14 when we first met. Our first interaction was through ICQ, the now antiquated messaging system that showed primal signs of social networking, as you could add friends to talk to, and provide a profile of yourself with carefully manicured details (Favorite Singer: Lauryn Hill! Third Eye Blind! Interests: Hanging wit frenz! Sports! Shopping!). We started chatting online because of the abundance in mutual friends shared. And through those chats, we came to realize that we only lived a few blocks from each other. That inevitably led to the suggestion of a meet, and one day, I agreed to stand outside on the porch so he could stop by and say hi.

I hadn’t ventured out to the world of makeup at that age, so I didn’t do a lot of prep work for our meet. I may have brushed my hair, and applied some Dr. Pepper Lipsmacker. He showed up wearing an impressively large T-shirt, the sleeves cut off to expose the pubescent muscles on his arms, which were only slightly bigger than mine. His hair was gelled into peaks and valleys, the way cool kids styled their hair back when the look wasn’t considered a colossal joke. He stood at the front of the gate, pushed his sunglasses down to his chin, and looked cautiously at me.

“Soo?”

“Hi! Yeah, that’s me!”

“Oh hey…” By the way he was already shifting his glance up and down the block, my brain told my feet not to walk up to the gate. Instead, they remained glued to the porch, held down by the obvious disappointment that was being flushed out of his face.

“Okay, well, see you later,” he said, and just as quickly as he had shown up, he was gone. We were at an age where an interaction so awkward could still be socially acceptable with its brevity. And it’s not like I wanted to stand there and have a conversation when such a crushing first meet has just occurred.

You see, at that age, I was five-foot-five, my capricious weight of 100 pounds largely dependent on whether or not I was carrying my algebra book. I had a mouth full of metal to correct some gnarly and aggressive canines, and glasses that looked like I had stolen them off Harry Potter. I looked like your quintessential geek because I was one. I was not a gifted athlete. I did not carry around the newest Jansport backpack at the beginning of every school year, or own Doc Martens. I was barely filling out my training bra. I read a lot of Nancy Drew.

Many girls my age were hitting puberty in strides. They were experimenting with different types of mascaras and foundations that were two shades too dark/light for their skin tones. They were wearing jeans that made boys notice their asses. They were going to the movies together, holding hands, making out, copping feels. I wasn’t there yet. Not even close.

But with what I lacked in my chest, I made up for with emotional awareness. I was acutely alert of the experiences my peers were having around me, and I desperately yearned to be included. I had watched enough She’s All That and 10 Things I Hate About You to believe that it could happen – that someone could see all the potential I had underneath my Gap Kids sweatshirt and take me to the prom.

But real life teenage boys are vastly different than the 20-something-year-old actors who play their counterparts. And in that interaction, I was rudely and swiftly snapped out of my naïve fantasies. A two-minute encounter and one unintentional look of rejection was all it took to obliterate my self-esteem. I never spoke of the incident to anyone, though I’m sure there’s an entry about it in one of my diaries somewhere.

I slowly grew out of that stage. I traded in my glasses for contact lenses. The removal of my braces assured my parents that they had gotten their money’s worth. When it became obvious that boobs were never going to be a factor, I bought some great pushup bras. More importantly though, I learned to use (disguise?) my geeky tendencies to mature other facets of my personality, enough so that I was able to have a great high school experience, one that didn’t leave me feeling like a hopeless sap.

There are people who are inherently confident, and thus have no problem exuding sex appeal. I’ve imagined what it’d be like, walking into a room without clammy palms. Or not having palpitations over initiating conversation. Or not thinking the worst about yourself when catching someone’s stare (Oh god, there’s something wrong with my face, that’s why he’s looking at me!). I’ve always envied these people, these people who don’t get mini anxiety attacks over the smallest social interactions. But I’d like to believe I’ve made some huge improvements, and I’m not as clueless as I used to be.

But when I saw that face from my past, more than a decade after I saw him last, I was suddenly transported back to that porch, back to the heartache that happened so abruptly and unexpectedly. And I couldn’t understand why I was flashing back to that awful first meet, especially since I thought I had vanished that memory. I thought I had mended it by hanging out with him a handful of times throughout high school. I thought I had gotten over it, but in that moment, on the elliptical, I froze. That heartbreaking scenario of my tiny self nervously waiting for this boy to appear, then seeing the utter disappointment in his face at the sight of me played on loop, until I could pinpoint the exact gut-wrenching moment where my morale crumbled. And even with all the years that had passed, I felt everything just as potently as I had before.

But the difference was, I knew I wasn’t 14. Sure, my ass had remained the same size, but it was no longer in a pair of size 00 American Eagle jeans, but rather, in a pair of overpriced Lululemon yoga pants. I hadn’t morphed into a supermodel, but I also wasn’t that same girl, with her cheeks stinging from humiliation. I had exboyfriends. I had travelled. I had some major achievements under my belt. I had experienced things. I had lived, man.

A part of me wanted to approach him, greet him with a friendly hug before shouting in his face, “HEY! LOOK AT ME NOW!” I wanted to point to my super muscular boyfriend and yell, “SEE THAT HOT PIECE OF ASS? THAT’S MINE! WE LIVE TOGETHER! HE THINKS I’M SEXY AS FUCK! SO, SUCK IT!” I wanted to drop an imaginary microphone, march over to my boyfriend, dip him in my arms, and land the most exaggerated kiss on his lips. This scenario obviously never took a step out of my imagination. Instead, I let him walk by without acknowledgement.

Some memories aren’t there to torment you. They don’t exist to make you feel small, or take you back to a place when things were unpleasant or hurtful. Sometimes, they’re there to remind you of the person you were, the challenges you had to overcome to become the person you are now. Sometimes they poke their heads out to remind you to be appreciative of everything you’ve endured, to make you realize the magic of growing into your own person.

And that’s exactly what happened. I was visited by this repressed memory, not as a way to damage my psyche, or my brain’s twisted way of trying to make me cry at a gym, but to provide perspective. It made me look over at my Boyfriend until I felt a flood of appreciation for who he is, to love me for everything I am and had been. He didn’t require overwhelming sex appeal and physical endowment to love me the way he does, which is, a lot. And then it made me appreciate myself, for taking all those little heartbreaks along the way and using them to build what is now my wacky ass sense of self.

So the next time you’re reminded of someone or something unpleasant from your past, don’t get discouraged by their presence. Just give them a smile, ever so slightly, to let them know that you turned out just fine.