An old photograph did this to me

I want to forget. Memories come back as I think they have been forgotten. I wince as the memory floods my brain. My muscles contract involuntarily and my skin erupts in goosebumps. I want the feeling to go away, but it doesn't... maybe I want it to stay a little longer, so I can enjoy the sweet torture. The masochism comes with the territory.

All of this doesn't last more than a few seconds, but the memory of the memory lingers. I feel more alive, like I've completed two or three lifetimes, in different cities, with different people, in different worlds... like that other person was me, but not me. Shades of me in that memory, but no, that couldn't have been me. I looked different, talked different, believed in different things.

Of course, it's all false, since I haven't lived a multiple lives, and I lead a fairly normal existence. But I like to fool myself, to believe that I have been created whole from those experiences, from those lifetimes of memories that I want to forget. Like a new improved version of software or soap powder or lipstick. Am I just a creation of my own confusion? Or am I a memory that'll make me wince a few years down the road? Or even better, both? I don't know... actually I don't want to know. It's easier not to know.