I generally think I have a pretty good memory. A certain set of stories from childhood are crisp, clear, I could even tell you the weather that day. So when I logged into an old email address to search for some old emails for a piece I was writing, I was confident what I would find.
I had uncomfortable correspondence with a few separate men during my college years and early twenties. They wanted to hit on me or date me, and I didn’t want to date them. I searched in my email, under my old name, for the messages I sent and received fifteen years ago, expecting to see the discomfort, the requests to stop, the overtly inappropriate replies.
But they weren’t there. I mean, I found the email threads, full of long messages which I had written. I chatted about my life in kind and generous paragraphs. I couldn’t find one line where I expressed discomfort of any kind.
I felt betrayed, not by these men, but by my past and present self. I questioned my memory. Had I imagined what they had done? Or had I simply never acknowledged it in writing?
