The Memories We Hold Onto

Louisa stands at the bottom of an old oak tree, looking up into the sky. Shadows are decorated across her face -- both that of dark silhouettes of branches and the shadows of memories from. She is standing at the place she spent most of her life. 

When Louisa was eight, her father built her a treehouse. Back then, it was her castle. A lovely little box made of cedar and nails, decorated with all sorts of things, all which hold nostalgic value. The more she looks, the more Louisa sees. She notices a grey feather, the very same that sparked her interest in the way birds fly. Beside it, there’s a single rock, hanging from complicated knots of threads and other strings. She believed for so long that rock was from the moon. Her father made her a balloon that would fly high into the sky and bring the rock back, but on the day of launching, Louisa had cried, saying she was too attached to her piece of the moon to return it. Her father hugged her and said that he was sure the moon would let her keep it, if she really wanted.

Memories are strewn all over the place. Louisa smiles, breathing in the sweet smelling air as she climbs up the oak tree and into the little treehouse. When she was a child, it could easily hold her weight. Now the tree and house creaks dangerously as Louisa tries to get comfortable. Her neck is strained and her back is arched in an uncomfortable position, but she refuses to leave the treehouse. Not when she has so much to think about. 

In the corner of the treehouse, Louisa spots a little pile of toys. Soft, fluffy animals and a strange thing that she distinctly remembers as a glow worm. There is a large teddy bear that Louisa used to curl up with, its big strong arms wrapped around her like a blanket of warmth as her parents fought down below and her older brother Elliot drank his way through a year's supply of whiskey. The teddy bear -- Domino, she called him -- has not aged well. Once a delightful and adorable toy, now the thing that Louisa would have had nightmares about when she was younger. 

It’s summer, which means outside is blistering with heat that turns Louisa’s skin red. Flies buzz around, happily being an inconvenience to anyone and everyone they can reach. Birds are tweeting, animals are chittering, but the day doesn’t feel right. 

It has been three months since the last remaining member of her family, Elliot, died. Now, Louisa is alone. She has a job, a girlfriend, and enough money to last her a couple of years, but she is struck by the realisation that she is alone. Despite never being close with her family, apart from her dad, Louisa feels the tears building up. She fights to keep them away. Today is a day to remember, she reminds herself. Today is not the day to cry. 

Returning to the treehouse was Amanda’s idea, actually. Amanda is studying to be a psychologist. This means that Louisa, despite loving her with all her heart, has to put up with Amanda’s therapy sessions disguised as goodwill and care for her girlfriend. “Go back there,” Amanda had said a few nights after Elliot’s death. “It will help you find an ending you never had.” Whatever that meant. But Amanda is, unfortunately, smart, and even worse: correct. Being back in the treehouse is helping Louisa to feel more at peace with old feelings. Nostalgia feels light  in her head, yet heavy in her heart as she remembers all the times she spent up here, watching Elliot slowly change from wine to beer to whiskey. Even now, years after she moved out, it feels as if Louisa can see him again, drowning his depression in a bottle. 

She remembers her mother leaving them in a cloud of dust. Elliot, who had been seventeen at this point, held eight year old Louisa’s hand so tightly it hurt. Their father didn’t say goodbye. He locked himself in his bedroom with his inventions and questions and tried to shut out the memory of his wife. He died ten years later. 

Louisa pulls herself back to reality, and is not surprised to find tears. Her father died eight years ago, yet she often finds her mind wandering, back to her father. Back to Elliot. 

They had been a happy family, once. Louisa collected feathers, rocks, and pens in her arms and collected smiles in her mind. Elliot was top of his class, well on his way to being a doctor. Her father had published a book that was on the bestsellers for the eighth week in a row, and her mother didn’t leave in the middle of the night to meet strange men. Louisa misses that time, now, because being alone is exhausting. 

She cannot stay here, Louisa realises slowly. She cannot stay or she’ll become like her mother, like her father, like Elliot. This house, this property, it does not let people go. She does not want to die of alcohol poisoning or a car crash or how her father died, with a broken heart and tired smile. Louisa is an orphan, but this treehouse she sits in, it is not her home, not anymore. There is a time to hold on, and a time to let things go. It is time for her to release the memories she didn’t know she was holding onto. 

Louisa takes a deep breath, glances around at the tiny little treehouse, then climbs down the ladder.

When she leaves, she swears she can see her family in the little box, staring down at her with smiles on their faces. She smiles back. 

Memories, Louisa realises later, are a trap. A trick. Memories are the things we hold onto, trying to keep as close to us as possible. Memories are nightmares and dreams, all mixed into one. 

Sometimes, holding onto our memories are good. Other times, when we cling to them like an addict to a drug. They’re as dangerous as driving in a storm, as finding the bottom of the whiskey bottle, as a broken heart. While we hold onto our memories, we let our future slip away, through our fingers like smoke. The more we cling to our past, the further our future runs. When we give up on chasing the future because the past is too heavy, that is when we are truly broken. 

The old treehouse in the backyard is a safe haven for memories. It is also a trap. Louisa cannot stay there, amongst those items that make her feel nostalgic for a past that she cannot change.