Marbles

An edgy old writing assignment I found deep in my computer

To write a memoir is to admit I have a lesson to share with the world.

But sometimes,

I just need to write something for the Me who won’t remember

Writing it at all.

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Divine Earth, packed to the brim with bones and art and the bones of art.

Eternally burying itself,

Leaving gifts for the meddlesome,

And those who left bones there in the first place.

I love having zero memories to my name.  It’s really just a great feeling, coming up blank  when you’re asked to recall a moment in your life, any moment, besides your birthday.  I really liked the movie Cars as a kid… If I was Owen Wilson, I could talk about my time in the Cars franchise. That’s hard to forget.  But I am not, to my knowledge, Owen Wilson.   

This will all be a memory tomorrow, and then it’ll be gone.

It’s hard, not being Owen Wilson having dissociative amnesia.  You have to play mind games with yourself, trick yourself into remembering anything that isn’t right in front of you, and the worst part is, you don’t even remember how you got like this.  From memory to memoir, it’s hard to suppress the grief of losing your marbles at just twenty years old.

Sometimes, I like to urge them back.

As I sit beneath a dying tree, I smell fall, a decade ago, back when the leaves glowed orange and I played tag in the wind.  I feel my old pink sweater, crochet flowers adorning the collar, a soft, affirming touch.  It was my favorite sweater back when the only music I knew was from the radio, or my family’s CD player.  I made my way better as a kid than I do now, I think.  While I may be free to roam and remember as I see fit, I can never stray quite as far as before. Back when I didn’t understand that I should be taking notes on my own life.  Back when I looked not for solutions, but stories, in the crunch of dry leaves under my ballet flats, or the sting of a scraped knee.  I do my best to conceal my blemishes, but as a child, all I’d think was how impressed my friends would be by the scars that trailed recess.  Kisses from the universe.  Lasting.  I run my fingers across my stars as I dream of memories.  They feel more like dreams than my truth, anyway, orange hues and softened edges, like seeing the world through a marble.

There it is.

It was summer when I found it, a clear glass marble with a wavy orange streak through the middle.  Summer had become quiet since the jump from high school to college, most of my friendships drifting into forgotten jokes or vague connections.  My college friends lived across the country and I had no one but the inchworms and my dog Luna to keep me sane.  It was one of those rare occasions where I felt inclined to loiter in my warm, humid backyard, tossing a ball for Luna until she grew bored.  As the slobbery toy skidded to a stop, Luna had already made her rounds to the back of my shed- an ugly white thing that was once a bar for my dad and his bandmates, now cluttered with rusty landscaping supplies.

Everyone’s grown old in this house.

Something prompted me to follow my little black dog behind the shed that day.  I was probably hoping to find something… Willing forth a mysterious buried treasure, one itching to be discovered.  Luna had already given up pursuit when I noticed a little orange marble poking through the dirt.  It wasn’t as if I’d avoided this place all these years, but for some reason, one little marble had slipped past my sight. Waiting patiently.  Concealed, but not gone.  I squatted to join the marble, and for just a moment, I was small again.  I picked it up, a letter from my past self, dirt smearing onto my fingertips.

How curious

A trinket discarded by a younger me

Forgotten

And now, ten years later,

A relic.

Something about the discovery hit a nerve deep within my chest.  Somewhere primal, untouched for a very, VERY long time.  I wish I was the kind of person to feel with such intensity that even a marble could prompt a jolly sob right there and then, but I simply cradled the marble in my hand, back into my house, up the stairs, and into the room I’ve had my entire life.  I stared into the marble, and then I cried.  Probably.  I don’t remember the rest of the day.

No one ever really prepares you for what it could mean to reclaim your marbles.  I’d probably equate it to waking up as a 2D-animated, talking car.  You’re confused… Yet, intrigued?  While also grieving the person you were before you woke up as a car.  Oh, and your life as a human suddenly feels like it was never real in the first place- like it was nothing more than a dream.

What is it like, to see the bottom,

A depth explored, not feared?

Something more than warped reflections?

Are falsehoods still lies,

When I believe them too?

I don’t necessarily recognize what I’m missing from myself until I’m directly prompted to come up with a memory.  Amnesia doesn’t hurt until it’s prodded.  Until you realize you no longer remember something you used to.  It’s not just a moment, either.  It’s a whole portion of your life.

When I examined that little glass marble, flashes of my childhood hit me at alarming speeds.  I had forgotten that I even played with marbles.  Then I saw my grandma’s face, younger, as she dumped out a container full of them, varying in color and size.  I saw the games I used to play, and my old craft projects.  Beautiful, cotton candy memories.  But with them followed anxieties, long since ignored.  Emotions I hadn’t the time to process, flooding into my adult body, still not yet prepared to confront them.  It’s no wonder I forgot the rest of the day.  My brain did the same thing it always had, abandoned a cracked marble before it broke.