Everyone Forgets

When I was young, before I left home, I was so soft-hearted, I worried my grownups. They would sit me down and have heart to heart talks with me about how I wore my heart on my sleeve. I was too trusting. Too caring. I believed in people too much.

They said if I didn’t toughen up, I’d be broken hearted my whole life.

They were right.

The irony is, when you live broken hearted too long, you toughen up. It just happens. One day, you wake up and you realize none of the beauteous curiosities that made you all teary-eyed and fuzzy ever meant a shitting thing. Not really.

And no one remembers anything anyway. The gratuitous kindnesses, the pay-it-forwards, the just because gifts you give away mean squat all.

Everyone forgets.

I read a story about a man who stopped loving his wife because she cut down a tree.

This is what sentimentalists do. I stopped loving the world and everyone in it after someone sold a house.

Sentimentalists attach themselves to things. They don’t even have to open books. They just have to hold them.

Sentimentalists can put their souls in their great-grandmother’s Chanel purse and it will stay there, perfectly still and preserved until it is retrieved.

My soul is in a wood ammunition box in a storage shed. It will not be retrieved.

My cat is in love with the idea of birds. She sits in the window and chitters and flicks her tail as if she will somehow hold the bird outside. My cat is a sentimentalist. Her soul is outside with a bird. If she were to ever catch one, she would definitely open it.