Memory Documentation

chapter seven | documenting our promises

"Darce?" said Chris when I answered my phone. "Hey, did you get my text?"

I winced as the lie rolled off my tongue, "Um, no. I didn't. What'd it say?"

"Well, I wanted you to come eat lunch with me and my friends. I'm in the cafeteria."

My toes curled in. I was silent for too long. His voice came through again, questioning. "You there?"

"Yeah, I'm here," I answered, my own voice cracking. Tell him. Talk to him.

"Oh, shit!" he exclaimed before I could put in another word. "Sorry, I didn't even ask you. Are you with some friends?"

Cold dread crawled in me. With that simple assuming question, I was reminded again of my past and faced with the reality of my present. The words slipped out of me without me fully wanting them to.

"No, actually," I said in a faint voice. "I don't have any."

A beat of silence passed, and then his chipper voice. "Oh, well, you can come meet my friends! You kinda met them when we were... erm, fighting... but I told them how we're cool now."

I dug my back harder against the lockers, as if doing so would allow me to hide from what I wanted to do but was absolutely dreading. My mouth continued to betray me as I asked him if he could meet me on the second floor to talk instead.

It only took him a couple of minutes to get up to the second floor, but in that time, I instantly regretted my decision. Why did I feel like I needed to have a dramatic, sit-down conversation with Chris over this? I didn't. I wouldn't talk to him about it, not yet.

He settled down in front of me, sitting criss-cross. He didn't take out any food. Instead, he rested his elbows on his leg and cupped his chin in his hand. "What's wrong?" were his immediate words.

"Nothing." Running with the intention of bailing my last decision, I took hold of a different topic instead. "I just wanted to talk to you about something that I wanted to do."

His eyes twitched into a quick suspecting squint, before he nodded and told me to continue. Feeling relieved he went with my lie, I recounted the afternoon where Jessica and I went through the many photographs she'd taken when we were younger. Chris listened intently when I told him about Jessica's philosophy behind photography and memories, and was nodding at the concept of me journaling in the new year before I even finished talking.

"I like it," he said, leaning back on his arms. "A diary."

"I like to call it memory documentation." Though, technically speaking, yes, I basically wanted to start a diary. "I want to do it for the whole year next year. Just write it all down - as much as I can. The small details, the big details, my thoughts, and my feelings. I want to be able to look back at it and remember all the things I might've forgotten. There's just some things that you can't remember anymore, ya know?."

That's what Jessica made me realize about overarching memories. They're the ones that are looked back on. They're the ones that are remembered the most, but all of them are composed of small memories that make up the big picture. Those small forgotten memories are probably what made it so special in the first place, but it's all categorized under this one moment in your life. These details, once so special and fresh on your mind, will disappear with time; that's where the diary comes in.

"If it's something you really want to do, then go for it," Chris said. "In fact, maybe I can do something like yours. I can collect stuff. You know, memorabilia. Souvenirs from the past."

The corner of my lip tugged into an amused smile. "So... hoarding?"

"I like to call it collecting memories," he teased in the same tone I had used. "Hoarding is something completely different - if you've never watched the show before."