Memory of Love (9781101603024) Read Free Page B

inside looking out, or the outside looking in. But something seemed to have abruptly ripped open. It surprised me that I didn’t feel exposed. Instead, I was filled with an inexplicable sense of anticipation. As if this opening of doors and tearing away of layers was a positive thing. Perhaps I was hoping it would help me to put the events of my life in some kind of order, help me see it as a whole. It was difficult to understand why this suddenly felt so important, when in the past the ability to close the door behind each segment of my life had seemed vital to my survival.
    I realised it could all prove a futile exercise. I was not at all sure there could be order in the life of any human being. Life is irrational and illogical, and we have to accept that, and try to arrange our lives around it. But perhaps we do need to try to understand our own history. See it as a coherent whole.
    There is a timeline to our lives. One event leads to another. One act produces a result, which becomes the basis for our next action. Looking at it like this we give our lives a kind of causality. I am not sure if this is an illusion, but I can understand that it is helpful.
    Now I wanted it for me.
    There seemed to be so many storylines though. So many characters acting independently in the dramas that made up my life. And they all seemed to influence each other in ways that were impossible to fully grasp.
    Then, as now, I knew that there is no absolute certainty about anything. I once believed that science offered certainty. That there were scientific rules that were immutable. This might have been why I loved science at school. And why I chose to study medicine. Once I believed that science offered a world with absolute truths. But the deeper I delved, the less absolute it appeared. There were inconstancies there too. New research made previous truths obsolete. And always, beyond every answer and every explanation, there was another unanswered question. It was like plotting my way through territories that gradually became familiar, but with a constant growing awareness of another unknown or unknowable reality beyond. Every answer was followed by a question mark. Every step took me further into the unknown. And the unknown grew, while what I knew seemed to shrink.
    I had lived in this small desolate place for nearly fifteen years. By myself, mostly. I didn’t mind. Absolutely not. It was a self-induced state. But the isolation aggravated the uncertainty, I think, and my life had taken on a slightly surreal quality. For some time I had found myself wishing for a way of corroborating events, memories. I had started to yearn for some kind of confirmation that my memories were still intact.
    I had nurtured my important memories and been careful not to wear them down or alter them in any way. I had tried to keep them safe, but they were not kept in order. I knew absolutely where each one was, and what it contained, but it existed in a kind of vacuum, separate from the others. I can’t explain why it felt like that. It was as if I carried them as an unsorted bundle, present only as a constant weight.
    I had come to think that if I were able to take them out one by one and place them in the right sequence, then perhaps they would be easier to carry. The painful ones might become more bearable if I could see each one as belonging to what went before and what came after. I think I was hoping for some understanding. And forgiveness, perhaps. Not from others but from myself so that I could finally regard myself with a measure of compassion. Not love – I certainly didn’t expect that. Not pity, I absolutely didn’t want that. But empathy, perhaps. For the little girl that was me. For the young woman I had been. And for the middle-aged person I had now become.
    I think I was hoping for the memories to merge, to become an understandable whole.
    And ultimately make me whole.

3.
    So, it was Thursday. I was hoping Ika would come. I