simple sweet memories.
Memories fascinate me. Not the science of them, but how we hold them. I hold my memories in scents and sounds. The smell of a certain perfume or hair product sparks the wave of memories and emotions tied to when I first encountered it. The memories unlocked are generally simple but sweet. The memories I wish I could always hold on to, yet they float away into a sea of other memories.
My favorite memories are the memories tied to music. Certain songs or albums transport me back in time. For example, the song Sunburn by Ed Sheeran brings me directly back to a trip I went on with my mom to NYC when I was fourteen. Or the song Cruel by Kacy Hill, which brings me back to dancing around the streets of Paris all alone when I was 15. That memory is particularly special. It was the first time that I truly could see that I would grow up and live a beautiful, free life. It was my first encounter with the feeling of liberation. I was free from my peers, free from my family, and honestly free from reality.
The feeling of being free from reality is a feeling I often seek. Reality is hard. Reality is work, and school, and mental health, and friendships; reality is all of my worries playing out in real-time. My escapes from reality have since grown, as they do when you become an adult, but the goal has remained the same. I seek that fleeting feeling of bliss that happens when you have a moment that makes you feel entirely free from your burdens. But in the end, reality comes back, but with time, I have learned that you need to love reality. You need to love the discomfort; I need to love the discomfort.
Going from a fifteen-year-old young girl, naive of what was yet to come, to a twenty-year-old young woman, living a life that I had always dreamt of, has been an interesting journey. I have accomplished almost everything 15-year-old me wanted. I live in a beautiful apartment in a beautiful big city, I am in college with good grades, I have friends that I love, an internship and job prospects that I am actually excited about, and most importantly, I am loved. I have overcome all the burdens of the past, or at least most of them, and now I don’t know what’s next.
I guess that that’s the beautiful thing about accomplishing your dreams; you get to create new dreams. But until I dream a new dream, I look back at the memories of 14-year-old me and 15-year-old me, and I remember how I felt listening to those songs. I remember the teenage angst and sadness I felt while listening to the entirety of Ed Sheeran’s discography, and I remember the freedom and hope I felt while listening to the likes of Kacy Hill, Jorja Smith, and Ruel. Whenever I crave these memories, which lately has been a lot, I listen to the songs and let them inspire my new dreams; because memories can inspire you to do more than you thought possible, because if I have grown the way I have since those memories were formed, than my possibilities of growth are endless.
