The Perfume of Memory
Every morning before work, I put on my perfume. I may not wear a fancy outfit every day, I may not wear makeup everyday (shocking I know), but I will never walk out of the house without spraying on some perfume. It is like my armor. The power to enamor with my scent.
We all had a chemistry class in high school or college learning that our body produces and has their very own unique pheromones. It is actually pheromones themselves, that attracts us to certain people, but repulses us from others. That is why, we have certain scents that make us gag. While other scents, put us under a spell. Hypnotize us.
Scents, of all kinds, are the little keys of data storage that are held within our memory. The brain, is a fascinating little thing, isn’t it? And to think, that we still have so much more to learn and discover about this organ! Anyways, I digress. Back to my story. I was spraying on my perfume this one morning, and thought to myself, how enthralling is it, that certain scents can just take us back to a specific place and time? Maybe a happy period in life. Maybe a special (or not so special) event. Think about it. Have you ever smelled a certain perfume that you used to wear, and then got so nostalgic for that specific time period? How strange is that? Or have there ever been scents that were “ruined” for you? (They do not have to be perfume btw; they can be certain foods too!) I know that for me, the “ruined” food is mushrooms. Just gross. The smell is enough to make me gag.
The reason I went on this whole perfume and scent tangent, is because I smelled a scent, a cologne of some sort, that reminded me of a person. A person, I no longer want to remember anymore. But every so often, we all have a handful of people, that come back into our thoughts and psyche. Maybe I imagined his scent? Or maybe, it actually was the cologne he wore, that I smelled from someone else. Either way, it transported me back to the past, back to those boxes of memories, that were compartmentalized somewhere deep within the labyrinth of my brain.
I realized that I escaped the present moment, even if it was just only for a couple of seconds. And that my friends, is how you can travel to not only a different place, but also, a different time. Be it the past, another dimension, or the far unknown (that I have no definition for yet) this is how you escape the present moment, or come back to a certain moment, that your brain still holds on to. We get little “reminders” of who we were, but are also reminded of who we are now. The scents, even the unpleasant ones, remind me, of who I have become. And that, even within the unpleasant memories, that I still have hidden and locked away, I am more than who I was. And I am so proud of who I am becoming.
The scents are nothing but reminders, to show me, how much I have grown. So, I put on my perfume with such confidence, because it truly is my armor. I am making new memories with the current scent I wear, which years from now, will be saved and stored somewhere deep within the memory drive of my brain. Throughout time, our tastes change. This includes smells. Let’s see how many scents you will go through, within your lifetime. I am sure there are hundreds, maybe even thousands, that will get stored within our conscience. And these compilations, fractions of memories, will all be a part of our proof, that we lived here, on Earth. And I am here for it, for all the beautiful and ugly parts of existence. Because that is what it means, to be a human. And so, it is.
