I Remember Everything

I Remember Everything

I kind of have a photographic mind. I remember everything since the beginning of the internet. I remember the dial-up tone, the AOL screen names, the first Geocities page I built in 1997 with glitter gifs and a visitor counter. I remember the usernames of people I haven’t talked to in twenty years. I remember what they said in chat rooms at 2am when we were all just kids trying not to feel alone. I remember who left my life, and when, and what their last email said before the account went dead.

For a long time, remembering everything felt like a curse. I could replay arguments word for word. I could recall the exact weight of shame when I was unhoused last June, in the hospital, spending July 4th at a Motel 6 in Eugene with police at the door. I remembered every detail of the Salvation Army intake that month, the sound of the shelter doors, the way the forms looked. I remembered what it felt like to be dismissed, to have a court case, to file for bankruptcy with nothing to my name. When your brain won’t let you forget, you carry it all — the good and the awful — every single day.

But I’m thankful now that my mind works this way. Because remembering gave me strength to create. I’ve been writing since I was a little girl. I started web zines when the internet was new, HTML tables and guestbooks and all. I got published in teen magazines. I wrote because I had to — because putting words down was the only way to make sense of a world that moved too fast. Writing was how I expressed myself when no one else was listening.

That same memory, that same need to write, is why I can build a website now. It’s why I can write a book that might be relatable to someone at their lowest. I remember what it felt like to search the internet at 3am for “how to get out of this” and find nothing that sounded like me. I remember the silence. So now I write into it. I write about being mentally stable now, about eating better, about the gym, about how God blessed me after the hospital and the motel and the police. I write about starting over in a PhD program at National University, nervous but doing it anyway.

I remember everyone I met. The ones who stayed. The ones who left. The ones who hurt me and the ones who saved me. The strangers in web zines who mailed me letters in 1999. They’re all still here, in my head, page by page.

A photographic mind means I don’t get to choose what I keep. But I do get to choose what I do with it. So I’m turning it into pages, into posts, into chapters. If you’re at your lowest — like I was last June — I want you to find my words and know you’re not the only one who remembers. You’re not the only one starting over. You’re not the only one who loved writing as a little girl and is finally using it to come back to life.

The internet remembers everything too. Now I do it on purpose. I write it down, so someone else can find it, and keep going.

*cathrynmharris