Sequoia

Driving around with my grandmother today running errands she turned to me, after several wrong turns and swapped names, and in heavy breaths remarked how heartbreaking it would be to lose your memory, as hers makes its inevitable slow decline...

As my time here in my hometown comes to a close I have been preoccupied with the move that I have hardly given a moment's thought to what I'm leaving behind, as I make my dreams visionary. I am thrilled to be disappearing off into the great, exciting, and above all terrifically new world of medical school... but I find it curious. All I've ever wanted since I can remember is to go far far away from this place, to get away from constant reminders of lives past -- and now I'm leaving with the fantasy of blazing trails in neuroscience, with a specific aim at making a dent in the treatment and prevention of Alzheimer's.

Nothing terrifies me more than losing my memory. I do not believe in an afterlife, I believe in here and now, in legacies and footprints. What I cherish most is my mind and the entire capacity therein -- which means all my memories, good, bad, pleasant and painful. All I have is my catalogued experience of this world and I am a bit ashamed to have desired so strongly to erase, to run and deny.

I hope I may have the courage one day to grow roots, really plant myself, and embrace all the emotional costs that I am of the luxury to bare.

--

I will miss this tired place, but I look brightly to what lay beyond the great wide open before me...