I remember

A haunting narrative about a person with hyperthymesia, struggling to cope with a lifetime of vivid memories that refuse to fade.

I remember everything.
Not just the big moments. Not just the pain.
All of it.

The color of the cereal box on the kitchen counter when I was seven.
The exact rhythm of my father’s footsteps on the stairs when I was twelve.
The smell of rain on the asphalt outside my school in September, 2009.
It’s all here. Perfect. Untouched.

Memory doesn’t fade for me.
It doesn’t soften with time.
It rots in place. Fresh. Raw. Eternal.

The worst are the deaths.
The blood. The silence after.
The faces locked in their final expression.
They are as sharp now as the day they happened.
As if I could reach out and touch them.

The child who ran into the road.
The man who leapt.
The woman who bled out on the floor.
They are not memories.
They are moments. Still alive. Still happening.

But it isn’t only them.
It’s everything.

The shirt I wore the day I first kissed someone.
The pattern of the carpet in my grandmother’s house.
The smell of hospital antiseptic the day I was born.
All of it layered in my head, stacked like glass slides,
never blurring, never leaving.

People think memory is a gift.
That remembering is precious.
But they don’t know.

They don’t know what it means to never forget.
To carry every mistake, every humiliation, every scream, every goodbye,
with the same sharpness as if it happened an hour ago.
No soft edges. No mercy.

I try to sleep, but sleep is only remembering with my eyes closed.
I try to forget, but forgetting is impossible.
The past is not behind me.
It is inside me.
Every second. Every breath.

I am a prisoner of time.
A body walking forward,
a mind trapped in eternity.

And one truth never leaves me.

I remember.
I will always remember.
And the memories will never let me go.