The Right To Be Forgotten

I find it perversely hilarious whenever someone over in Europe speaks of "the right to be forgotten".  There's a sort of bleakness to such theorising.  The "rights" they are proposing are so far from my experience, so far from my reality, that they're hard for me to take seriously.

To me, being forgotten isn't so much a "right" as an inevitability.  Given enough time, everything will be forgotten.  Everything we are, everything we know, will be lost.

I struggle against that, have struggled against that for a long time.  There's a lot of the fear of death in there, of dying not just bodily, but of dying so completely that nobody remembers I existed.  That prospect has been a hard one to come to terms with.

As I get older, as I change, it gets more complicated than that.  There are things about my past I would genuinely like people to forget, because being reminded of them causes me pain.  The name my parents gave me, for instance - it hurts me to be called by that name.

Mainly, I think, because it's hard for me to recognize that I am no longer that person, that I have changed.  There's a thing that a lot of people like me do, is we take recent photos of ourselves and put them up against old photos of ourselves from before.  I have this strong desire to prove to myself and others that I have changed, that I'm not who I once was.

That's what "the right to be forgotten" is, right?  The right to be recognized for who we are, not for who we were?

I don't have control over that, and that is a hard thing for me to deal with sometimes.

I try to stay off social media, but I am dimly aware of some of the challenges Black Dresses have been going through.

I believe it is reasonable to expect others to not make a mockery of one's personal trauma.  Like, I feel silly even having to say that, but I do.  Devi didn't put her trauma out there in the world so that other people could make fun of it.

It's a big world and there are a lot of fucked up people in it.  That's not an excuse thing, that's just, you know, there are people who can't or won't treat their fellow human beings with basic respect.  As much as it pains me to say it, I understand that happens.  I understand, too, needing to pretend otherwise, understand the pain when that facade breaks.

"Forgotten", I guess, that's not really the right phrasing.  I can't forget who I was, where I am, what this world is.  I just wish I didn't have to be _reminded_ of these things all the fucking time.