Erasure

You never know when or where you’d meet someone special. There are the normal places: work (good luck with that), bars, clubs, school, church, public transport and so on. And then there are ones that are worth telling; on trips in foreign lands, in remote, hopeless places (as Rihanna sings).

I like getting to know someone. Its like reading a history book. Pages and pages of who they’ve been, who they’ve been with and who they want to be. I like noticing their little quirks – words they never fail to mispronounce, how they drink their coffee and the way they walk.

Needless, to say, getting to know someone special is an experience on a whole different level.

In a way, what two people cultivate is never owned by one party alone. And thus, when relationships end, what is experienced never makes it out wholly intact. We choose to discard photos, throw away flowers and tear letters into unrecognisable fragments. We click to empty our Trash (I think its called Recycling Bins for the Windows users) of pictures, videos and whatever digital memories that the 21st century has cursed us with.

Unless they both decide to remember nothing, no failed couple emerging from a broken relationship will, consciously or not, remember equal amounts of these shared experiences. We all lend our own thoughts to give everything meaning. We each value different things in a relationship.

One boy’s scribbled piece of napkin can be one girl’s Declaration of Undying Love. And one haphazardly written post-it note can prove surprisingly resilient – stubborning clinging on long after things have reached their conclusion.

In the end, what one chooses to remember about the other will how define what time spent together was. Its all about perspective. Its all about what we choose to forget.

You know what, maybe I am wrong about when or where you meet some special.

Maybe every story is worth telling.