What went around, comes around

That afternoon, Ada woke up from her short nap determined to buy what she had been waiting for all this time. There were just 15 minutes until lady Fatimah leaves for her 5 o'clock tea, so she got dressed as fast as she could, grabbed the coffee she always needs after sleeping and left in a hurry.

Across from her house, there was a small but very well-supplied shop called “A little bit of everything”, whose owner, a chubby lady originally from Syria but married to an English journalist, was exceptionally gifted at healing any disease, either mental or physical, by just mixing the appropriate herbs and ingredients.

When Ada got to the store, Fatimah had already left, and instead of her, her eldest daughter, who was the only person she would leave in charge in her absence, was there. Ada would have never let other person different than lady Fatimah to assist her, but the girl asked kindly:

-Welcome, how can I help you, Miss?
-Hi. Well...er...I ordered this medicine to Fatimah some weeks ago- she said, showing her client card- I wonder if...

Before she could finish her sentence, the girl had already left to the stock room. When she came back, she was carrying a little green crystal jar, with a note on it:

-The oblivion potion- she read slowly, - yes, it is ready- Here you have.

Ada took the little jar with a mixture of happiness and surprise, left twenty pounds in coins on 50 pence- it was her tips savings for almost 2 months, and run to her apartment impatiently. Once in home, she removed the label from the bottle and read carefully: “To reach the forgotten state, take one teaspoon everyday, preferably with meals, during 2 weeks. Do not take during more than one month. In case of discomfort, consult Fatimah”.

Gradually, she fell in a forgetfulness state which made her delete all the bad experiences, her last breakup, her parents' divorce. Little by little, she became happier, hopeful, optimistic, any bad memory affecting her now. However, all that glitters is not gold, and short after, she also started to forget the good memories, the summers from her childhood, the chit-chats with her sister. One morning, when she looked in the mirror, she had to check her face twice to recognise who she was. Her cat was starving because she forgot to feed him. Everything around seemed strange to her.

Eventually, I could not think of an end to Ada's story. Sometimes, many of us would prefer to delete like her all the bad memories, clean our minds from the negative past, or start from zero. Other times, we lean on sayings such as what does not kill you makes you stronger just to make a sense of the negative experiences. To me, the idea that our past influences our present, and will influence our future is one of the lemas of my life. To have the faith, the belief, that our stories matter, that across all the experiences we have lived, either good or bad, something has remained, something has been learnt.

“You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes our lives. (...) Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it we are nothing.”

(Luis Buñuel, Spanish filmmaker).