Notes of Reflections on Grief
Rest, Photography by Amida Oluwatobi
written a couple of years back, transferred from retired blog.
What do you do when your mind holds onto memories harder than your body. Your body remembers everything in its wake even though it plays along your make belief game of moving on with your life, and your mind remembers in your sleep during your most unconscious out of control hours it does what it likes with all the faces you left behind. The mind holds reconciliation or homecoming parties with long forgotten faces while you sleep, it betrays your vow of forgetting and goes to all the places your body would never dare to cross into again. Even though your body too remembers everything you've convinced yourself it knows nothing about. Each memory is stored in a nerve like a silent offering contributing to the fuel of your existence, the way you limp after you lie down for too long on your side is informed by the time you stubbed your feet against a stone as a child, the strain at the back of your neck when your room gets too cold has something to do with that one time you stayed too long in the pool as a teen, the swelling of your face that turns you into your mother when you sleep for too long occurs in direct relation to all the time you spent swelling in your mother's womb. But you do not remember, you chose in some cases to forget, so you told yourself my body moved on with me, my body would never betray me, my body is mine. Then your mind laughs knowingly as it hears everything you have to say all the time, it knows nothing is in your control. No part of your life can be kept by you.
Each morning arrives before the sun. Does my life have to make room for darkness like that?
Does my mind not know as it recycles lives in my dreams that I no longer exist in those spaces. Does it not know that some of these people are dead, to me. Does my mind not know it is mine? And why then does it want to keep on living occasionally through my dreams. Does it not know even if it remembers, that I want to forget.
I want to forget. I want to forget. I want to forget all the things and people that will never hold my breath within close proximity again. The life I left behind no longer wants me too. Whose consent does my mind ride on while I sleep cause I know it's not mine. Who thinks of me and causes my mind to sneeze, all these people? Including the dead?
Each new day begins at sundown. Does my life have to make room for darkness like that?
Did my heart not believe me when I promised it new expressions of love that would keep it so busy and cause it to burst from joy. Did my mind tell it I was lying, I in fact have since been scared of emotional attachments. Do my mind and body talk to each other behind my back?
In that case please tell me what will help me rid my chest of grief. It keeps leaking. The grief of my old life keeps leaking out of my chest into other areas of my body especially when I go to sleep. Please tell me what to do and help me, forget.
