The First Memory

The memory fades away with every breath breathed in its direction. The very act of recalling the memory destroys it piece by piece as though my mind attempts to chisel itself away. However, instead of an uncovered work of art from polished marble, I’m left with the rough sections of jagged rock lying in ruins. The memory – or was it a dream? – is now left alone upon the realization of this fact of degradation. It’s kept haphazardly locked away in a mind constantly trying to shove more memories into the very limited space of matter.

As quickly as the images were birthed and flashed in front of my vision the bits and pieces of memory fade away. The memory, created so long ago, has more fillers that my mind has suggested than what the rest of the recorded thoughts my body have actually experienced. My earliest memory of me sitting at my own second birthday party could be entirely made up, drawn out, and probably should be tossed aside. However, like a drowning person suspended in-between life and death who desperately thrashes around with what remaining energy they have left to take another breath, my memory holds on—still.

I remember more emotions than pictures, a sense of confusion under the dazzling lights flashed in the dark. Why were there giant ugly animals dancing around on stage and singing about pizza that I wasn’t sure I was supposed to eat. I can’t hear the cries of other toddlers nearby screaming with concern, but I an intense weight of heaviness from the speakers sitting next to the deranged looking rat in a ballcap is there waiting for me to re-remember it.

My mind will always be subtly haunted by the images of a giant fictional rat and his friends loudly screaming about cheesy pizza. I won’t get rid of the sound of plastic spheres crashing down in avalanches on top of struggling small children. Most importantly of all, I’ll think back to the small crowd of family members welcoming me and my immediate family unit to California after moving back from Hawaii. The love they had to have for me and my parents to sit there at Chuck-E-Cheese’s with crying children had to be in abundance.