I’ll never forget you

“I’ll never forget you,” I said. “I could never forget you.”

Even so, my memory has grown increasingly dim, and I have already forgotten any number of things. Writing from memory like this, I often feel a pang of dread. What if I’ve forgotten the most important thing? What if somewhere inside me there is a dark limbo where all the truly important memories are heaped and slowly turning into mud?

Be that as it may, it’s all I have to work with. Clutching these faded, fading, imperfect memories to my breast, I go on writing this book with all the desperate intensity of a starving man sucking on bones.

This is the only way I know to keep my promise to Naoko.

…The more the memories of Naoko inside me fade, the more deeply I am able to understand her. I know, too, why she asked me not to forget her.

Naoko herself knew, of course. She knew that my memories of her would fade. Which is precisely why she begged me never to forget her, to remember that she had existed.

Excerpt From: Haruki Murakami. “Norwegian wood.”

Late night reading Haruki Murakami.

Perhaps a part of me writes things to do the same: to remember.

To be honest, I’ve forgotten the faces of some people I deeply cared for one year ago. However, I want to treasure the emotions I felt and how these emotions have changed me little by little.

I don’t want to be forgotten either.

I won’t hide the fact that when I enter a social space in which I know I will leave, I sometimes make it a goal to be remembered for something. Anything. A sign that somebody cares. I don’t know. Maybe I am an insecure person after all.

So I write. To think. To understand. To remember.