How does your brain decide which memories it keeps most safely for you? What determines which memories live most vividly in our memory? What makes the colors so rich? What makes you feel that moment and that memory all over again? What makes your heart rate rise, what is it that makes you cry? (Everything, apparently, if it’s me we’re talking about.) I’m putting this here for safekeeping.
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we were playing pop at chc 2013 on sunday. it was so hot. the air was thick and my legs felt like lead. i don’t know how we willed them to keep moving, to keep churning, to keep chasing, to keep cutting. beachfront was on our sidelines for the later stages of the game, cheering loudly and injecting our team with some much needed energy. i can distinctly remember catching the disc in the middle of the field and seeing sam streaking deep along the right sideline. there was no one behind her, and i heard thor from the sideline encouraging (heckling?) me to boost it. as i recall we were going downwind, so i hesitated for a second before putting up an inside-out forehand huck that sailed out the back of the endzone, and something like a thousand fields over (good one, self). i was demoralized. we had been down by at least three or four, and we’d been in that position before — i think it was chc in… 2011, i want to say? we traded the first few points until maybe 3-4, and then pop just kept rattling off score after score — and i was afraid we would lose heart and stop fighting. but god damn, we never did. we broke back until it was double game point. after a number of turns, pop found themselves maybe five yards out of the endzone, disc trapped on the force side. i was on the primary handler and they called an iso for her. she went hard upline but i had it covered. i was stoked, but was still anticipating a seven cut. instead of the seven, she continued on a kinda fade route to the back cone and the thrower connected with an around flick over my dumb, outstretched arm. i think i might have fallen to my knees immediately. i don’t remember. i don’t remember getting in line to shake hands either, but i did. when we were done, i walked a little ways off, squatted down, pulled my jersey over my head, and cried. not the wistful, graceful loser, silent tears streaming down my cheeks kinda cry — i sobbed. i sobbed during our team huddle. i sobbed after. i don’t have anything to say about it, i’ve just been thinking about it a lot lately.