I’ve been worrying a lot lately about how fleeting my memories are getting. I have more days where I’m sure I did things but by bedtime I can’t remember what any of them are. It’s probably a shared state related to current events, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

I’ve taken to hoping this means I can shed some things I don’t want to remember anymore. Maybe I can keep the time I agreed to eat a chocolate covered jalapeño the week before Christmas if my friend, who suggested it and was moving away soon, paid for mine too. (It tasted out of season, watery green, and the only remedy the store sold for the discomfort after I downed it in one bite was lukewarm water.) Maybe I can lose the time I drove home sniffling because for the first time, someone made me feel intensely unsafe and small. Maybe if I think hard enough about redirecting the forgetting, it’ll happen.