This may never start
We could fall apart
And I'd be your memory
Lost your sense of fear
Feelings insincere
Can I be your memory?

So get back, back, back to where we lasted
Just like I imagine
I could never feel this way
So get back, back, back to the disaster
My heart's beating faster
Holding on to feel the same.
-- Sugarcult, "Memory"

I feel like I'm too good at forgetting now. Every time I go to sleep and wake up, I feel like I'm a part of washing machine cycle. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Things I'm thinking about the night before suddenly don't really trouble me much in the morning, with a few exceptions. I can never remember what I'm supposed to do or when to do it. I seem fine at remembering information from my classes, even though I sometimes don't remember the homework assignments. Sometimes, the more I try to recapture a thought, a feeling, an idea, the more I feel it slip and fade away until it seems like it never happened. How can I ever truly know that something happened if I can't reexperience it through memory? Am I doing something essentially unhealthy every time my mind unconsciously lets something painful or difficult slide away? There is so much uncertainty in my life right now, so many decisions to make, so many options to weigh. And my best source of solace is also yet another source of uncertainty. I think that my odd memory problems are probably an effect of my slow coast through this part of my life, my expectancy of a more important future, and an unwillingness to make decisions. I'm floating in a stream down a mountain, and problems slough off of me like dissolving dirt, but they're never really going to be gone. I'm slowly heading for the waterfall, and I have to be awake for it. I only hope I can snap out of it in time.

The only times I feel totally comfortable or "right" now seem to be when I'm doing academic things, be it tedious analytic geometry or having too much fun playing a Jeopardy! review game in U.S. History. In the past several weeks, I've stepped so much out of my comfort zone that I think I'm starting to crave simplicity and constancy. As much as I care most of the time that people see me as more than a walking brain, I can't deny that I still take comfort in those things that are stereotypically "me." At times like these, when I feel pulled in so many different directions at once, even in past, present, and future, it feels good to take refuge in the first part of my personality, probably one of the first things people know about me. I have been discovering so many new parts of me, both good and bad, that I feel like a deck of cards that badly needs shuffling, some evening out, some integration. How can I even begin investigating the broader reaches of the all-important question "Who am I?" if I can't even figure out which fragment of me is going to show up in any given situation? Maybe that's it. I'm so busy juggling all the fragile shards of myself that I almost can't be bothered by any external problems.

But on top of all that, there have been times recently that I've felt happier than I can remember in years. It seems that the cycle of hope and letdown is the one immutable law of teenage life. I need some sleep.