I forget people exist. Not always, but a lot.

I can’t tell anyone. I definitely can’t tell the people I love. They would find me callous and cold. I’ve heard that a lot over the years. They would assume they understand, but they would only see the surface and not the substance underneath. They wouldn’t look at the pain it causes me to acknowledge this.

I forget people exist who should take up every ounce of my heart. They do take every ounce of it; it’s just that there are times when my heart is so focused on this moment that it forgets the people who wove its threads together. I forget them when I’m in a meeting or hyper-focused on accomplishing a goal. I lose myself in the moment I sit in and can’t recall them for some time. They slowly fade back into view after each step I take back toward my reality. My mind draws a blank on names and memories, and the people I love fade into the background of some washed-out cloud where I hope they wait patiently for me to allow them to return. 

How many times I haven’t remembered a name. It’s more than memory. It’s deeper. I could be talking to the person every day and hesitate to trust that the name I think is theirs truly is. Then, there are moments when I know every name. I relish each accentuated letter. I recall each and every second we shared before.

My mind is a mystery.

How awful it sounds as I type this out that I don’t always think of the ones I love and how deeply I care for each of them. I forget they exist because they live in little boxes that open up during specific moments in my life, only to close just as quickly when something else pops up. It’s this strange jack-in-the-box game, except there is no crank, and they would never smile if they knew how thoughtlessly they were shoved back into that tiny box. 

For about two years now, I’ve considered there may be more to my forgetting than I realized. A friend of mine told me I may have ADHD. I can’t possibly have ADHD, though, because I am obsessively organized. I am never late because the anxiety of wasting someone else’s time is more painful than I can handle, so I’m always ridiculously early, even though I loathe waiting. My impatience never wants to wait on anyone, myself included. I don’t leave cabinets open, except when I forget. There was that one time someone told me it was a horrible quality, and they shamed me into shutting everything even before I was done getting what I needed. I only have two dozen alarms daily to keep me on track, and I can follow a sentence to its end, even if there are more than a few detours along the way. I finish projects (not all or most, but many; don’t bother counting how many I start, though) because an Ex once told me I could never finish anything and would never accomplish anything. The list goes on and on. 

Then I forget that I started by talking about the people I should never forget. Only after a while, they forget me. I can only imagine that in the time it took me to realize how they must have felt. How many people had expectations of me that I could not fulfill. They expected someone else inside this Susie suit and didn’t know the struggles welled within.

You see, if it isn’t in front of me, it doesn’t exist. Occasionally a memory pops up and I go to send a text to someone, but then something happens and I forget to send the text that could have kept our relationship hanging by a thread. The thread is long gone, and it seems I have frolicked off to greener pastures. Only, I have no idea where I am or how I got there. I didn’t forget how much you meant to me, only that I knew you, just for a few hours, a few days, a few weeks, a few months. I swear. It isn’t what it sounds like. But it is. I forgot you existed in my mind. My heart never questioned you are a large part of my reality, but my brain can’t be pained to do its damn job.

I want you to know how much you mean to me, or did, except today, you aren’t penciled into my agenda. You aren’t on the schedule, and I can’t find you on the calendar. Please forgive the oversight of you. For me? How awful. I’ve remembered you and held you deeply, but the life I’m living today doesn’t trot you out in front of me as I need it to for us to keep on. I need you in my face.

People don’t like to wait or be on hold. I wouldn’t, either. But today, my life is so planned out and overloaded that I’ve resorted to adding “lunch” to my alarms, my calendars, and my to-dos. Otherwise, I’ll forget that food is an essential part of living. I go more days without eating than I care to count. If food isn’t necessary, how could people be?

I don’t forget people on purpose. I don’t have an excuse. I can’t explain or beg forgiveness without sounding obtuse. My reality is that there is too much on my mind to remember to think about the people who aren’t in my everyday. I only wish that others understood the depth of emotion I hold for them, even though I can’t get my attention to do the same. I wish they knew that soon, my life will ease a bit, and time will once again find its way back into my everyday. When that happens, I hope more of them will be able to find grace for me and understand that my forgetfulness was temporary. My forgetfulness was nothing to do with their value and simply that I can’t remember not to forget. 

My forgetfulness was only in my head and never my heart.