On Being Remembered

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This week felt off.

Not dramatic-off. Not crisis-off. Just… misaligned. Like my words were half a beat ahead of my thoughts. Like I talked too much, explained too much, offered context no one asked for. The kind of week where you replay conversations later and wince, wondering if you overshared or just forgot how to be contained.

When routines fracture, so do our usual guardrails.

Travel will do that. Disruption will do that. Being yanked out of your normal orbit by decisions made far above your pay grade will definitely do that. You start narrating yourself because the ground feels unsteady, and narration is a way to check that you still exist.

And then—unexpectedly—I ran into my first supervisor from the agency. From way back. 2018. A lifetime ago in the line of work we do. 

And I was remembered.

Not vaguely. Not politely. Not with the generic “Oh yeah, you worked there too.”
I was remembered with specificity. With warmth. With stories. With affection that hadn’t expired just because time had passed. Remembered with a huge smile and "Oh my God! Come here!"

I was remembered as competent. As valuable. As someone who mattered.

And here’s the thing people don’t talk about enough:
Being remembered kindly across time can knock the wind out of you.

Because it proves something that exhaustion tries to erase — that you are not just surviving moment to moment, leaving no mark. That the versions of you who showed up, worked hard, cared deeply, and carried weight didn’t evaporate when the chapter closed.

They left an imprint.

Being remembered like that is different from being liked in the moment. It’s not transactional. It’s not performative. It’s not tied to what you’re doing now. It exists independent of proximity and usefulness.

It says:
You mattered then.
You still matter now.
You didn’t imagine your impact.

And yes, that made the rest of the week feel strange by contrast. Tender. A little raw. A little unarmored. That kind of confirmation loosens things. It opens the floodgates. It makes you softer in conversations, more porous than usual.

That’s not weakness. That’s contact.

I didn’t get to go to Knott’s Berry Farm.
I didn’t get to go to Universal.
Plans fell through. Fun was postponed. Systems failed in the very predictable way systems fail.

But I was reminded of something far more durable than a theme park ticket.

I was loved then, I am loved now. 
I was cherished then, I am cherished now. 
And that truth survived distance, years, and silence.

So if this week I talked too much — fine.
If I was less polished — so be it.
If I was human in a moment that didn’t require strength — I’ll take that over disappearing.

Some weeks aren’t about momentum or achievement or joy.
Some weeks are about continuity.

And being remembered?
That’s proof of life.

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