+++ categories = ["me"] tags = ["aphantasia"] date = "2018-07-24" title = "Prising open a deathgrip" layout = "post" resources name = "header thumbnail" src = "*LJDT9x9mGOXZfzdVLiDGqw" [resources.params] [resources.params.meta] creator = "Oladimeji Odunsi" license = "https://unsplash.com/license" sameAs = "https://unsplash.com/photos/e-TuK4z2LhY?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText" +++ I live in the present. What else can I do, when I have no memory.

Look to the future? Psh. I am indeed prone to daydreaming about what *might be *but there’s no inherent danger in that. Not while I keep it in check.

No. My problem is clinging to the present. Not to the past, to the present.

I do not give up that which I have. Not without a fight. Not without deep clawmarks on every fading memory.

As a result…I take loss badly. I flat out fear it. I don’t like to look forward too far, and I can’t look back so…I hold tight to what I have. There’s a damn good reason I fear death so bad. This is a — large — part of it.

The thing about holding tightly is that it smothers…

By nature, I death grip at slivers of life. It makes me possessive. It makes me…intense. It makes me suffocating.

But without a memory, I don’t know how to let go. I’ve got to though, otherwise I always kill that which I’m trying to preserve.

I refuse to let myself love like this. I don’t know how to love lightly. And anything else isn’t really love. Not the crushing fake-image attachment that I previously labelled love. I struggle with the ‘L word’ in general at the moment. Not least because I’ve had it subverted before.

Maybe I’ve learnt enough lessons…maybe I’m lucky in that regard…but that’s a story for another time…

Now, a note that my insufferably sincere side refuses to let me omit. This is a public self reflection (standalone piece on the whys of that coming whenever it frees from draft hell) made while mildly tipsy. Caution advised.

But I suppose, isn’t honesty the best policy in writing? I don’t know. I don’t know if I know anything anymore…Maybe that’s okay.

Well, rambling now. Goodnight!