I

There are two things wrong with my life: The times I cared too much and the times I cared too little. It is true what they say, that distance makes the heart grow fonder. But on this insignificantly small hunk of rock, there’s only ever so far between two things; that is why human beings have memory. With memory we can peer back over the interminable parade of nows and see the distance not only in miles or feet, but in minutes and seconds.

I’ve always been old. No matter how many years passed, I could never catch up to my own age. My friends used to tell me that I was the youngest senior citizen they’d ever met. But, you know, I never wanted to believe them. They always treated me as an outcast, a dancing bear in a circus; an oddity, and one to keep well shy of.

In the long years of one’s life, one always tries to write down their memory. For more years than was, perhaps, my due, I have tried to begin writing this, but have never been able to. I tried staring at the blank page, waiting for my sticking thoughts to clot into words. I tried laying awake in my bed until finally sleep gave my mind release from the torments of remembering.

Before now, I never understood why it’s always the old that write. I thought it must be because they’ve had more dreams to write down. It’s only now that I’ve begun that I realise that we write because we don’t dream any more; we only remember.