Last year I started a segment called RECAP. I created this to share with paid subscribers a recollection of my most interesting musings. Every letter in the word RECAP was supposed to mean something different every month, but as time went on, I found that this model was unsustainable. Not because I couldn’t think of different words for every month of the year but because when I tried to write about anything that happened over the last four weeks I have lived, I felt short of words. I didn’t recall anything worthwhile telling people about.

I felt like I had nothing to say. As if all of my memories from the past month had disappeared from my brain. I looked through the pictures in my phone’s gallery searching for clues; I found pictures of meals I ate, my cats, an outfit I wore and liked, and various snaps of sunsets here and there. When I looked at the pictures, I had vague memories of the moment I took them, but I didn’t remember living them. I didn’t remember how that dessert I shared with my mom tasted. I know it was good, but I couldn’t remember what it felt like to have it in my mouth. I tried to reminisce, but every time I tried to, it felt like I was making feelings up out of nothing but a picture.

A year ago, my grandma lost 90% of her eyesight. She can only see shadows and lights, and sometimes she confuses her memories with reality—she starts to reminisce about her childhood and calls out for people that are no longer with us or whom she hasn’t spoken with in years. When we tried to bring her back, it backfired. She said that we are the blind ones for not seeing what she is seeing. My grandma is sure that these memories of people she keeps replaying in her head are happening in real time, and for her sake (and ours), we have started to play along. If those memories keep her with us longer, who cares if they’re real or not?

My first therapist once told me that I didn’t have a poor memory; she said I had a “selective memory.” But don’t we all? One way or another, we are all unreliable narrators of our own lives. We remember what we want and sometimes what we wish to forget. We remember phone numbers, birthdays, and conversations we should’ve forgotten a long time ago. We remember feelings. We remember pain and happiness. But never with the same intensity. Never with the same candor and specificity. There’s sadness in that, in knowing we can never go back in time and relive better times. But there’s also something painfully beautiful about knowing that a memory will never hurt as much as the real event.

We recall fragments of experiences. Every memory is a memory of a memory. The more we think about an event and the more we dissect it, the more we lose sight of the original. Those events we remember disintegrate with time; they become mashed potatoes, tainted water, a white t-shirt stained by red wine. The longer we try to piece them together, the more they become something else. Somewhere beneath it, the real thing lies, but it can never be the same again.

I’ve been reading some of my first pieces that I published here, and I love seeing how much growth I’ve had since writing them. It fills me with something deeper than pride to know that those fears that kept me up at night months ago don’t bother me anymore. It is a testament that pain and suffering are ephemeral. A reminder that when we are in the thick of agony, we forget the endless possibilities life has to offer us. We ignore that emotions are like waves—they rise afloat and then die at the shore.

Moving on, the RECAP segment will keep the same sentiment; it will contain mummified events that left an impact in me and that my mind chose to store somewhere within the many cells of my brain. But it will be more intentional. In the past it felt like obligation and now I want this new version to be an exercise of memory for myself, that forces me to reflect on what I felt/learned/experienced, throughout the month.

I felt short of words before because I felt pressured to write about the most consequential events of my month and I didn’t find any of my mundane events wortwhile because I wasn’t living in the present. I was trying to capture it with my camera instead of saboring it. I was looking at the pictures in my phone to remind me of past days but I forgot that it doesn’t matter if I can remember exactly how it felt to experience something, my memories are mine and I am the only one who remembers them like I do. It doesn’t matter if I only remember one of the three meals I had yesterday, or if mix up the color of the skirt I wore a week ago. Sometimes life it’s more than just facts.

So, here’s to all of my memories: the good, the bad, the fake, the ones I wish to forget, and the ones I wish to remember. I’ll make sure to write about all of them. Don’t expect them to be anywhere close to reality. Just know that they’re real to me, and that’s all that matters.