The other day, outside a doughnut shop in Brooklyn, my friend told me that I was right about the Whitney; it was an amazing place.

I was half-paying attention, idly scanning Google Maps for a place to eat.

‘The Whitney? That’s a museum, right?’

He confirmed that yes, the Whitney was a museum, and in fact I was the one who had told him to go. Apparently, he had called me earlier in the year to ask for recommendations on places to visit in New York, and I’d spoken at length about the Whitney Museum. I’d talked about how incredible the art was, how much it had meant to me to see it.

I, of course, had no recollection of any of these events: him calling, me talking up the Whitney, me going to the Whitney. I barely remembered the Whitney being a museum, and one that was in New York.

‘Cool,’ I said. ‘What kind of art does it have?’

‘American art,’  he said.

I frowned; it was hard to imagine myself as a person interested in American art.

We flipped through photographs he had taken of the museum just yesterday, the art hanging on the gallery walls. Approximately none of it looked familiar to me.

‘You’re sure I’m the one who recommended it?’

He was absolutely sure.

My friend seemed deeply disturbed by that fact I could not remember the Whitney Museum. According to him, I had once felt very, very strongly about it. He knew I’d been having severe memory issues since contracting covid two years before, but it was still unbelievable to him that I’d forgetten something I’d once cared so much about.

I just shrugged, in a What can you do? sort of way, and announced that I’d chosen a place to eat.

–

The museum I (allegedly) went to and loved (source).

Over two years into Long Covid, this kind of thing has become a familiar occurrence: every other week, a conversation or a calendar notification reveals there is a Big Thing I can no longer remember. I’ve gotten used to it, not enough that it stops hurting me, but enough that I no longer care to voice that hurt aloud.

I am trying to meet the circumstances of my life with dignity. I am doing my best to masquerade as a functioning member of society, and to find levity in my situation. I’ve often joked to friends that what you can’t remember, can’t hurt you, framing my chronic amnesia as a life-hack version of emotional invincibility. Because there are much worse things to live without. I have money, food, and shelter. I am, at least in theory, a free person with the full span of human rights.

Most days, I think I do a good job of keeping on, and not letting myself get bogged down with despair. So it’s odd, then, that forgetting the Whitney has actually made me very sad, sadder about this disease than I have been in a long time.

I’ve forgotten things a lot more important than an art museum. People I used to love. My own family. I’ve forgotten yesterday, and chances are I will forget tomorrow.

Maybe it’s just that I’ve always loved art. I’ve always spoken of it as if it was the one thing that would last; the one essential thing I loved about the world, even when I felt there was nothing else to live for. Maybe it’s the idea that even art is not enough to remember, that bothers me.

Or perhaps I’ve always been this sad, and underneath the bravado I am not yet done mourning the person I used to be. The only difference is, for some reason, this time I’m letting myself feel it.

–

I have reached the point in this disease where, whenever I experience something, I end up thinking to myself: What’s the point?

What is the point of feeling happy? What is the harm in being sad? What is the point in waking up each day, in leaving the house, in learning something new or traveling the world when I will forget it within a week? When it is destined to become nothing but an anecdote out of someone’s else’s mouth, one that makes me crinkle my forehead and go, ‘Really? I did that?’

What’s the point in living, when you yourself can’t even recall having done so?

I don’t know.

I want to be brave. I want to believe I am still a person, even if I cannot always remember who that person is. I read books and let myself be touched by them, even knowing soon I won’t be able to explain why they touched me. I’m trying to tell myself that it’s enough that a moment exists. It’s enough for something beautiful to happen once, and never again.

When I’m not working, I’m trying to write down as many things as I can — about the world, about what I think and feel and hope and despair — in my journal and in stories and in essays. I used to write because I wanted to be known by others, but I think I’m writing mostly now to be known by myself. I want to leave a record for the future, in the hopes that one day, the words on the page will fill the gaps in my mind.

I never used to be a person for photographs, but the past couple years I’ve started reaching for my phone whenever I see something I want to remember. Art, nature, people’s faces, public parks, dogs in cafés, interesting architecture, particularly indignant pigeons on the street. These photos are my makeshift past; all else will be lost.

I’m okay being forgotten by the world, by other people. But–perhaps, selfishly—I don’t want to be forgotten by myself, not while I’m still alive.

As for whether I ever went to the Whitney – I still don’t know. None of my photographs are tagged with the museum’s location, which is perhaps a point in my favor. But while I was digging through my phone, I did find a note from a previous trip to New York which appeared to be an itinerary of sorts. On Sunday, August 22nd, I wrote down: ‘Visit the Whitney.’