My External Memory… The Math Walls

I shouldn’t be looking at these photos, I know I shouldn’t. But this weekend has been full of extremely triggering events, from the titles and story-lines of my usually so diverting fanfics to the paper I had to write this weekend. And so I couldn’t help but go through them again.

These photos are pics I took of the walls of my room, the day before my parents painted it all over, now almost a year ago. It’s a fraction of what was on them, hundreds of proofs, formulas, diagrams and calculations. My personal artwork. My walls. My external memory. I knew each of the things on that wall by heart, and when I let my hand run over them I could feel them. I could feel the despair of the logarithms, the naive excitement of the nuclear deterioration sequences, the statuesque nature of the Uncertainty Principle and the nervousness of the derivatives. Hundreds of eyes, hundreds of lips, hundreds of words whispered in my ear. I remembered each and every one of them, their exact spot on the wall, whether they were in pen or in pencil, thick or barely noticeable. They encouraged and reprimanded me, in their own silent voice.

Now… Now my walls are painted. So many times already my mother told me how she says my room is cold. How it has no soul. My room is dead. Dead like a piece of me.