I think one of the hardest parts of moving on from any relationship comes not from the bittersweet memories but rather from having to let go of those memories. I’ve always prided myself on the ability to store incredible amounts of information in my head from obscure WWII history such as the Fanta soda brand coming from Nazi Germany when the Coca-Cola factory there could no longer get the necessary ingredients. Rather than just shutting the plant down, the foreman took what he had available in sugar and fruit juices and created Fanta (short for fantasievol – fantasy). After the war he went to Coca-Cola of America and provided them his recipe which lead to the current day Fanta.
And while that information is interesting and largely unknown, I mean a completely different type of memorization. At the end of a relationship not only do we have to let go of the person, we have to let the memories of them fade as well. We have to find new stories to tell. We have to have new adventures to old places. We have to overwrite the memories of that girlfriend, that husband, that bestfriend, that date that ended so terribly. But worst of all, we have to stop telling the stories you once held so tightly that the picture frames have shattered leaving your bloody hands cradling broken glass.
This feeds into the idea of memories and dreams appearing identical in hind sight as both experiences act as an archaic photography flash pan. They start with a flash and fade into colour as the lens focuses in on a particular view. Our mind acts as the credits roll through the introductory scene in our favourite film: our own. For me I always imagine something along the lines of Donnie Darko—just in the mid-2000’s rather than the late 1980’s. A montage rolls slightly slowed down to accentuate the song playing as it lays the groundwork for a journey of self-exploration of the only existential question for all of humanity: what does it mean to live?
