forgetful me

There was this song that i kept singing yesterday. But it has nothing to do with the Last-song Syndrome. I cannot remember where and when i have heard the song that day or the other day, but all of a sudden i was just singing it and i had a hard time to stop thinking about it.

When i keep on singing a certain song again and again, that's only when the lyrics would hit me. and i swear the coincidence of yesterday's song lyrics was that it was the song for me at this period in my life. so i told myself to look up the song's lyrics on the internet once i get the chance to. unfortunately, i never did. cause now, i can't remember the song. no matter how hard i think, i just can not remember it. nada. not a trace!

have you ever had that experience?

actually, this is nothing new to me. similar situations have happened a thousand times. when i was a student, i forget exams, appointments, engagements, and what else? i even forgot once to wear my bra and i was in school already when i realized it! it was soooo embarrassing! i got overly-conscious the whole day. Good thing that never happened again! whew!

house keys? well, i just had tons of incidents in the past on having myself locked-out for leaving the house keys inside my room. so now, it has become a habit for me to check for my keys before leaving my room. it would be the same question as 'did i wear my bra right now or not?'. although i do always ask myself this kind of questions, there are still times i mess it up. (i am talking about the keys here now).

well, there are also times that i would go at one place, and once i get there, i'd totally forget what i was supposed to do there. on those instances, i retrack to where i was and try to be more conscious in going to where i was supposed to be and with pure luck, i'd remember what i was supposed to do there.

then there was this incident last monday when an officemate of mine told me that he forgot to bring a hundred bucks.

"what for?", i asked.

"to pay you."

"what for?", i asked again.

"you can't remember? last friday?"

was i supposed to remember something? did he owe me money?

"did you owe me money? when?", i tried to recall it, but i just can't.

"oh, it was when we had those drinks, right?", i smiled for finally recalling it.

"oh my, you can't really remember, do you?", the jerk is laughing now.

oh please, brain! help me out here! that was all i could say to myself. there i was, struggling to remember when did i ever gave him a hundred bucks that day. i was like seated in front of my monitor for about like five minutes just trying to recall that incident, three days ago. but i just can't remember. so, i asked somebody else from the office who might remember that incident. and lo and behold, the person that i asked actually remembered me giving that guy a hundred bucks. and i could still not recall it.

okay, call that short-term memory or a mild case of alzheimers?

well, after another ten minutes of carefully accounting the events on that day, i remembered that i indeed lent that guy a hundred bucks. so whenever i bumped into him at the office after that, i would remind him now of the hundred bucks he owed me :)

oh well!

but sometimes, being forgetful has also its advantage. you can select what you want to remember, and easily disregard from your memory the things you don't want to be retained. okay, not really easily, but you can. when i watched the movie 'eternal sunshine of a spotless mind', i wished the device they used to erase a certain part of your mind were true. when you've been hurt a lot in your past, you just can't help to wish that you could erase it. but now, i think i have learned to do something similar, thanks to my easily forgetful mind.

sometimes, i can't remember how it was to be in love. i can't remember how it was to be betrayed. i can't remember how it was to be hurt as i was hurting. i can't remember how it was to loose some of your dignity. i know it's not normal. but i think i've just learned to balance out the things i'd like to remember. and what had happened within the past three or four years, all good and bad, i could barely recall.

and there's a good term for that. selective amnesia.