There are days when every heartbeat triggers a memory.

Days when the opening notes of a song will bring me back to experiences I can’t bear to revisit. Days when driving by a highway sign with a particular city name on it will threaten to pull my mind to places I dare not go. Days when a certain ingredient on sale at the store will remind me of a recipe I haven’t tasted in years, and will make me wonder if it’s been long enough yet that I can brave attempting to cook the dish myself.

Days when certain interests or mannerisms of my daughter show her family traits so earnestly that I no longer get the choice of burying that background knowledge. Days when sharing something from my childhood with her opens up floodgates, a deluge of pop culture references I once knew that connected to people I knew them with.

There are days that I spend in two places at once – the present, and the past. And on those days, I’m not sure which setting feels like the more distant one and which is the more tangible. On those days, the present is almost more unreality than my past, which has become so mired in and blurred by pain that it’s hardly more than half-remembered at the best of times. My memories are the charred, ashen remains of whatever I could pull out from the fiery wreckage of the first 25ish years of my life; I’m still nursing the burns on my hands. And yet, there are days when I’m pulled so thoroughly back, my true surroundings darken into shadow while the flames of the past ignite anew in my mind.

There are days when I am forcibly reminded that are some things that cannot be extinguished.