Life Is Not A Monologue

forget about it

i have a terrible memory
it's not bad enough to be bad, just bad enough for me to forget things that are important
it's not bad enough for me to need a keeper but it is bad enough for me to need reminders for things, for me to do my assignments at the last minute, for me to irritate my friends because i never remember their birthdays or their anniversaries or the dates on which they go away
i never remember

but my memory's not bad.

Mostly my friends laugh about it
every time i forget a name or a date
Or i correct myself halfway through a sentence because i realise i was wrong, only just too late
Or my face drops halfway through a conversation because i realise i had an assignment i hadnt done
Sometimes i accidentally offend someone because i mistake a fact i should have known
And mostly my friends laugh
That is suze
That's what she's like 

All the time, i wish my memory was better than it was
(who doesn't require themself to be perfect?)
But honestly if what i want of myself is to have no faults
i think i should probably stop wanting it
i would not mind my memory if it were not the thing that defines me
That is suze, right
That is what she's like

our group of friends is big and happy and chaotic
We are not the bad kids, the ones who go to parties and grope each other and don't remember it in the morning, but we are also not the good kids who get straight a's and study at lunch times
We are average
We find other things to define us

My friend zack is a singer
I know he likes singing, and when he shares his voice with us i can see the joy on his face
But sometimes i wonder if he gets sick of being asked, hey, zack, do you know radioactive? do you know all alright? zack, sing us a thing! 

sometimes i wonder if zack would like it better if none of us knew he could sing
no, that's not quite right
Sometimes i wonder if zack would like it better if we all forgot he could sing as soon as his singing was done

maybe i am talented that way
I do not like being the forgetful girl
But maybe if i can forget that zack is a singer i can start to see him as a guy
I think he likes to perform
I think we are lucky that he shares his singing with us but i think
I think
I think that he is more than his singing just as i am more than my memory

Sometimes i wish my memory was actually terrible, instead of colloquially terrible
relatively terrible
It is worse than everyone else's but it is not worse like it could be
(it could be worse)

Maybe if i had amnesia, short-term memory loss disorder, cognitive issues
Maybe then i would not mind if people defined me by my forgetfulness
Except that i still might have a personality or a family or a pet cat and even amnesia would not be all of me
I dont even think it would be most of me

I think the truth is that people are not anything
People are lots of things
Maybe there is that rare person who is mostly something
But usually

I do not have one characteristic that is all me
I do not even have one characteristic that is mostly me
We choose what we see of other people when we allow ourselves to define them
And what other people see of us are the ways we allow ourselves to be defined

We are average
We are always going to find something to define us
Maybe that is just how people work
(or maybe that is just how i have defined people)
And looking outside that and finding a million things that prove your definition wrong is a very difficult thing to do
especially since it is a thing you have to keep on doing

But every time you ask
That is suze, right?
That is what she's like?
Please know that you are, positively, definitely:
Not even mostly
Right.