if everyone forgot you, who would you be?

okay hi, quick fyi: there are light spoilers for spider-man: no way home and spider-man: brand new day. also, this piece is not really about superheroes (even though i am kind of a marvel nerd).

last night i had the worst nightmare that i went to my upcoming dentist appointment and the dentist told me she had to pull out some teeth, refused to listen when i said no, and proceeded to do so.

you can imagine that i woke up freaked out by this. i even went to the bathroom to check that all my teeth were still there (spoiler, they are).

fun fact, i am lowkey terrified of the dentist, so this morning i asked my boyfriend if he would come with me, given that it has now infiltrated my subconscious. he told me he would sit there, hold my hand and make sure they didn’t pull out all my teeth.

bless his soul.

but i kept thinking about the fact that i asked him.

i am a very independent girl. usually i would rather do something alone, and hate every second of it, then tell everyone afterwards that it was completely fine. but, i don’t know how to describe it, with him i am less like that. i actually ask for help. i let myself be soft and emotional and scared of things that other people might find silly.

and he doesn’t make me feel weird for being, well, me.

because he doesn’t make me feel weird, i have slowly stopped treating those parts of myself as weird too.

anyway, somehow the dentist nightmare led me to a much larger and honestly quite depressing question, somewhat inspired by the spider-man movies.

what would happen if my boyfriend forgot me?

then i made it worse by imagining that everyone forgot me.

very fun morning over here in vancouver hahaha. a lot of you say you “love my mind,” but i fear you might think otherwise after today.

in this thought experiment, you still remember everything. the people you love are alive and well. your photos and messages still exist. they simply have no memory of you.

they can see that you were part of their lives. they just don’t know you anymore.

i think my first reaction would be to find my boyfriend and explain everything.

i would show him the photos on my phone, our old conversations and anything else that proved i wasn’t some crazy random woman who had learned an unhealthy amount about his life. he would probably believe the evidence eventually. i mean, there would be far too much of it to deny.

but what would i even want him to do after that?

he could accept that we had been together without feeling like we had been together. he could read all the messages he sent me and still feel nothing when he looked at me.

imagine having to watch someone discover that they loved you!?

i could show him the message about the dentist. i could say, “you told me you would come with me and hold my hand.”

he would probably think this was a really strange thing to demand from someone he had technically never met.

and suddenly i would feel embarrassed for asking. the version of me who needs help would disappear almost immediately because i would have no reason to trust him with her.

that is the part of this whole thought experiment that bothers me. i wouldn’t only lose him. i might even lose that version of myself? or become scared to show her.

i know the soft version is still me. it’s not like he created her. but he made her feel safe enough to come out, and i don’t know whether i would know how to be that person around someone who looked at me like a stranger.

now i want you to think about the person you feel least weird around.

what parts of yourself come out around them? what do you tell them that you would normally keep to yourself? who are you when you are not trying to seem easy, capable or completely fine?

then imagine having to introduce that version of yourself to them all over again.