i don't want to remember my life anymore

i've always been afraid of forgetting. now i'm not so sure.

Jul 13, 2026

I have nothing to say.

I’m sitting here, trying to write my Substack essay for tomorrow. It’s July 12th, and I’ve got nothing.

Since starting this journey here, the topics have come relatively easily. Sometimes I’ve had to drag them out with force, yes, but never like this. Today, there’s nothing to grasp.

It scares me, this emptiness where the words should be. They’ll never come back, I think.

Familiar guilt rises in me. I should be applying to jobs. I should stop writing. I should start saving money.

I should, I should, I should.

My fingers hover over the keyboard, waiting for proof that refuses to arrive.

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I’m at my boyfriend’s parents’ summer house in Norway. I’m sitting on their terrace couch, looking out at the glittering water and tree-covered mountains that still manage to take my breath away, even after seven years.

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to this view.

Birds sing above me. If my mom were here, I’d ask her their names. Back home, I can’t tell the difference between her whistling and the birds’ song.
I realize I’ve never told her this.

His mother made waffles, which we ate in the sun, and their scent still lingers in the air. It mingles with the sunlight warming my skin, taking me back to the summers of my childhood, when my dad toasted premade baguettes in the oven, and we ate them after hours of running through the sprinklers.

I would run inside, hair still dripping wet, my stomach rumbling at the smell that enveloped me like a hug.

Before the waffles, my boyfriend and I went for a walk through the small neighborhood of wooden houses with green roofs. He strolled ahead as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world, while I stopped every few meters to photograph every flower and house.

As I watched him, I wondered if I’d ever stop feeling the urge to document it—the beauty and wonder this landscape makes me feel. It’s like I’m living in a fairytale that I keep expecting to end. The photos are my proof that it was real.

If I keep telling myself to appreciate something, am I fully present?

Or am I performing presence for myself?

I can’t tell the difference, and that scares me.

The water flows to the left beneath the small hill where the house sits. The air is warm yet crisp in that northern way. If I start feeling too warm, the breeze catches it and replaces it with a chill. I welcome it.

The trees lining the far side of the shore sway slightly, but I can’t hear any wind. Only my thoughts.

A moment ago, my mind felt empty. Now, somehow, my thoughts have made their way onto the page. It’s funny how that works—how nothing turns into something when you let it exist as it is.

I wonder if I’ll remember this moment—an ordinary day in July when my mind was quiet. Now I think I might.

Because writing is how I remember.

I don’t know if it comes from zooming in on a moment or from the way it makes me feel alive as I do. It’s probably both.

Since joining Substack, the small moments I’ve written about have become vivid memories. Honestly… I don’t think I would’ve remembered them otherwise.

Writing doesn’t just help you make sense of your life. It helps you live it more fully.

Writing helps you pay attention—to the way the light pools over the kitchen table, to the laughter that starts in your stomach, to the way nostalgia makes your heart ache, happiness and sadness impossibly combined.

Writing is how the seemingly ordinary days come alive.

I hear laughter now: my boyfriend, his mom, and our godson are playing somewhere on the grass beneath me, hidden from view by the wooden deck lined with rose bushes that stretch across the lawn.

I hear water splashing, soap bubbles float through the air, up and beyond.

Six years ago, we celebrated his grandmother’s eighty-fifth birthday here. I have a photo of my boyfriend blowing bubbles on the terrace, the sunlight painting them with rainbows. Balloons flew through the air as part of a game of Floor Is Lava.

I wonder if I would remember it if I hadn’t taken that photo.

Then I think about when we sang her happy birthday, and she cried, which made me cry. And I don’t have a photograph of that.

Part of me wants to stay here and edit until I find a lesson, a ‘takeaway’ that makes it feel worth sharing.

To make it good enough.

But maybe that’s the point.

Maybe today is a reminder that the words don’t come from staring harder at the page, from trying to force something that isn’t there.

Maybe it’s a reminder to close my laptop. To open my eyes to the wonder around me. Not to have something to look back on. Or to prove to myself I appreciated it enough.

But to feel it. To let it exist as it is.

Even to let it be forgotten.

Because I don’t want to live my life in order to remember it.

I want to live my life in order to feel it.

Right here. Right now.

I keep thinking about a dream I had the other night. In it, I was already dead, but I had one last moment to live. And no part of me wanted to sit down and write about it.

I just wanted one more moment of looking up at the sky, of letting the sunlight envelop me like the smell of bread used to, like a warm towel at the beach, like the presence of the people I love.

I wanted to hear birdsong and confuse it with my mother’s voice.

I didn’t want to spend that moment remembering.

Maybe I’ll remember this moment: how the sun tickled my toes, how the water glittered so brightly it hurt my eyes, and how my godson, pronouncing my name “Tia,” made bubbles of warmth well up inside me.

Maybe.

For now, I’ll close my laptop and leave this moment unfinished.

Because to write, I first have to live.

I’ll let my bare feet touch the grass.

I’ll let them bring me closer to the sound of the people I love.

And I’ll let this ordinary July day be enough.

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