There were so many things I chose to forget about both grade school and high school that it now seems like a strange blur. It seems I've got very immature defense mechanisms. When something is unpleasant or painful, I choose to forget all about it as much as possible, and to forget the surrounding events too--like a surgeon excising a malignant tumor who also takes out the normal skin around it, just to make sure there are no metastases left. It seems fairly unnatural to remember so little. The thing is, I think I forgot that there were times when I was really happy.
Last night, my friends Timmy, Ginny, Mia and Athalyn came over and we talked a lot. Mia was there for about seven hours and the rest arrived some time after. I remembered so many things that I chose to forget and that I shouldn't have forgotten, and so many of the painful things were no longer painful. And I did experience a kind of mildly vindictive sense of triumph--that I might have been bullied for being chubby and ugly (not that I didn't do my own fair share of bullying.), but that I survived childhood and adolescence, and that while all around me former batchmates are getting pregnant/falling into petty crime/generally living quite dissolute lives, I'm a fairly stable adult.
Not that I feel happy about bad things that might have happened to them; only that, years later, I don't really believe I had, or have, anything to be ashamed of after all, and that the taunting was not a consequence of some fundamental flaws in me, rather a fruit of the cruelty and pettiness of young children. Even my extremely public crush on one of the boys at school, whom I liked for about eight years, is no longer a cause of embarrassment for me; I realized over time that I never really knew him, and that I was just looking for someone to be Arnold to my Helga, and that were I to see him now I could face him with a semblance of equanimity.
What I regret the most is that I allowed some bad memories to get between me and my friends. I forgot that it was the first group I'd really belonged to and that they had actually loved and accepted me--our letters to each other, dug up all these years later, prove that. I forgot that I loved and accepted them too. I forgot lunch time in the canteen when we'd share food and talk about boys and Japanese club (when everyone else in school simply assumed that we were talking about academic things, because we were nerdy like that). I forgot how much fun we had singing karaoke together, how sweet our letters were, how wonderful it was to automatically have someone as your partner or groupmate when the teachers chose to pair us off or force us to work in groups.
And the songs we sang! We were part of this musical play, book and lyrics having been written by the Japanese sisters, about the Fairy Crane (Tsuru no ongaeshi), and the songs were really beautiful. The wonderful part is that we still remember the lyrics. In Japanese club we also had to sing this song called Kimi wo nosete (from the Hayao Miyazaki film "Laputa"/Castle in the Sky) and yesterday, we sang it, complete with different voices, and I was so amazed that we could still do that despite not having sung the song in about ten years or more. When Mia finally uploads the video we took on Facebook, I'll upload it here, too.
The only thing that can really encapsulate everything is this song. We sang it once for a Christmas party. (Another great thing about is that we were all singers.) It's the opening theme from a Ranma 1/2 song--which is not as nerdy or out-of-place as it sounds, considering that this was the 90s and that we studied in a Japanese school. Wasurenai (kono sora wo), wasurenai (kono yume wo)...
Dreading the school bell, we can't help but worry…
Classmates behind me, we can't help but hurry…
They'll catch their breath then they'll say:
"Go-od- Mor-ning!"
Sweet summer grass that grows wild by the roadside..
Starting each day with a smile that I can't hide…
It's what I know … but may not be so.
Casual moments like these mean so much to me…
Treasured times that don't need any key …
In the album of my heart I keep, old times keep like new.
No, I won't forget…How the sky is blue
No, I won't forget … How this dream came true
They're the gentle times we'll share forever, long past all those times are through
Even when I'm sad … days I just don't know
Even when I'm glad … days the tears just flow
Memories of days I'll never, ever let go.
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