Absence

In my mere sixteen years of living, I can already personally confirm the fact that human memory is surprisingly fragile. According to neuroscience, information that our mind decides is "emotionally important" is sorted into our long-term memory. However, the hippocampus is also sensitive to adrenaline and cortisol, and long term exposures in these hormones can occasionally result in such memories becoming repressed. When we were told to think back to last year's Fourth of July in class, I realized I couldn't really remember the night of my Fourth. I only knew I got into a particularly horrible fight with my parents. Despite what little I remember, there's an undeniable amount of irony that can be found from the situation.

What's truly missing has to be given some existence, in order to be classified as "gone," like Allyson Booth explains in Postcards from the Trenches.  In regards to missing soldiers, she states that "the commemoration of absence demands at least a representation of presence," meaning that what's lost cannot be acknowledged without giving it existence. The same reasoning goes for memories. Is a missing memory really lost, if I'm allowing the feelings I know that surrounded it to unconsciously succumb me when I think of something as simple as fireworks?

Additionally, I was able to find similarities in my Fourth with Frederick Douglass's speech, The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro. Obviously, a shaky parental relationship is in no way as severe as slavery. However, I can't help but think that that night, I was a slave of my parents expectations, with their words chaining me to long-lasting emotional tension. The day I was supposed to celebrate my freedom was the most controlled I've ever felt, evident to my mind's apparent wish to forget.

To the average American, the Fourth is an excuse to party. To African Americans, the Fourth is a reminder of racial injustice. To me, its an anniversary of an altercation I wish I could forget more than I already have.