Keeping a Record of Memories

I was 15 when I started puttering about online. I made my barkada a website with all the blinking GIFs you could imagine. Our studio pics from that studio in Galleria lined up like a photo album you could scroll. It was on Geocities with a ridiculously long URL that I seem to vaguely remember as www.geocities.com/SouthBeach/Sands/5653.

I could never keep a diary for more than a few pages until I would forget to write in it, so I started a blog before it was even a word. I started and consequently left so many journals online like a trail of cookie crumbs for me to find. The longest-running that’s still online is probably my Livejournal. I started it back when you still needed an invite code to sign up for one—I forget who gave me one. I spilled so many secrets, mostly to people I barely even knew offline. They knew more than my friends in real life. Everyone said what they felt and no one judged anybody (at least that’s what I thought then). I kind of miss that time when stories flowed endlessly and I’d spent weekends going through my friends’ list and never reaching the end.

If you know where to look, you’ll find traces of me everywhere. From every single song I listen to, to the movies I watch, and the books I read. I try to keep track of everything because, I don’t know, maybe one day, someone will want to get to know who I was or what I was like. Maybe that person would be me.

I’m always worried I’ll forget things and nobody will be there to remind me. I once cried because I deleted a text message from my mom (it just said “Good luck”) when I switched phones. It probably doesn’t mean anything to anyone else when they read it, but I know she sent that to me when I was on my way to my first shoot for Yummy back in 2006.

Maybe that’s why I keep posting memories online, no matter how repetitive I get. To remind me on days I feel like they’re slipping away. I remind myself that I’ll never forget.