Some Of The Memories My Body Made

I have been intrigued by how our body could hold memories and display it when we least suspect it. I have wondered how much our body and brain pick up from the things and people around us and why does it pick these things up only from certain people? I would like to believe that there could be memories in our body of people that we are both close to and not as close to as we are with our best friends, siblings, parents, etc. For example, a strict professor who always sat straight and looked from above her glasses that sat low on the bridge of her nose, the school principal who tended to use hand gestures while he was speaking. It could be anyone that catches our attention and manages to hold it. 

For a while now, I have been noticing my actions. It helps that I am highly observant of myself. I notice and remember what my hands do, what my legs do, my eyes, lips, eyebrow fingers, every muscle in my body that makes a visible movement. I always notice them. So I can’t help when I sometimes catch myself doing things that aren’t as per my body language, but of someone that I hold dear to my heart. Let me give some examples.

The earliest that I can still remember now is one of my friends from highschool. She was shorter than me, but very smart, cute and lovely with a bold tongue. She used to hate accountancy because she thought she was terrible at it which resulted in us studying together most of the time so I could help her. We studied in a boarding school which ultimately resulted in students living in each others’ presence all twenty four hours of the day. It was always fun. My friend had a certain way of walking. She would swing her arms in a bold way, her hips would move elegantly and her head would always be tilted a bit upwards. Not straight looking straight ahead, not slightly down looking at the path her legs walked on, but a bit upwards. I am pretty sure her eyes were looking ahead and watching her way of course, she couldn’t be walking looking at the ceilings and sky, but it was just her head tilted upwards. To me, it was intriguing. She walked like she owned the place, walking like a queen at whose presence and sight your body would automatically bow down cowering away in respect and fear. I always observed her walk even though I didn’t know I did that until I started walking like her. I didn’t catch it immediately that I had started doing it, but it wasn’t late when I noticed myself either. It has been almost six or seven years since I left school, but I still walk like that sometimes.

Next are my friends from college. Let’s call them Vash, Shan and Jam. Vash, Shan and I stayed in the campus dormitory and Jam lived at her home an hour away from our campus. We were pretty close to each other. Again living with my friends and being so close to them physically for all twenty four hours of the day allowed me to notice their actions without me having to realize it. Vash has this little difference in one of her pinky fingers where it is always bent at almost 90 degrees because of the way her muscles grew. She would tell us small stories of how it caused certain funny things to happen as a kid, like when she held her hands together next to each other to hold water or grainy objects, it would always flow out of the hole created by her bent pinky finger. I always found it cute. Her pinky easily caught my attention whenever she spoke or did anything and I made sure to tell her it was cute whenever she was angry at it for causing any inconvenience. 

Vash also wore glasses, she still does. I wore glasses as well and still do. But she wouldn’t wear her glasses all day like I did. She would only wear it when she had to read or work on her laptop even though her eyesight was worse than mine. While I did not like having to see the world with even a bit of blur, that didn’t matter to her, she preferred how she looked without glasses. She had a way of squinting her eyes when she had to focus without glasses. She would squint one eye more than the other, her eyebrows raising up to form a questioning look on her face tilting and turning the side of her face with the over-squinted eye forward. I realized that I had noticed these things about her in so much detail when one day I suddenly caught myself squinting my eyes like her and looking at how my pinkies were always slightly bent while my hands were in certain postures. I remember telling her that I was imitating her and she thought I was doing it on purpose to poke fun of her. She wasn’t offended, she must have just given me a snarky remark. But, it was not my intention to imitate her at all.

Similarly I picked up an action from our other friend Shan. She had a way of flipping her hair with her hand when she was making a point during her storytelling sessions. She told us a lot of stories about people she knew from her school and through her school friends in other colleges. Her flipping her hair was not an intense action, but a light one with a lot of sass. Her forearm would be almost straight but her wrist would be bent with her hand arching upwards. She had long hair. She still has longer hair than I do. I have short hair that I let grow only till it reaches my cheeks before I go off and get it all chopped off again. Now when I want to sass, I do the same actions she would do, but with my front bangs, flipping them off my forehead.  I wonder what I would have picked up from our friend Jam if she also lived with us in the dormitory. 

Growing up, I watched the way my dad would sit while eating. It was and still is our habit and part of our culture to sit on the floor, crossed legs and eat by hand. While eating with his right hand, his left hand would be placed on his thigh, elbow pointing outwards, wrist and hand turned inwards. It made me think of it as a posture that expressed a lot of power. It might have just been a matter of convenience for all I know, but as a kid who was afraid and respected her father, the pose did scream power. Now after growing up, I place my hand like that most of the time.

As I grew up I also ended up noticing too much of how my twin brother and younger cousin’s hands and fingers were when they were holding them up or when their hands were in a resting position. It is safe to say that my hands sometimes behave similarly now.

I could sit and think for hours and hours to find out what else I had picked up from the people I let myself be close to and watch every movement. Surely it might sound creepy at first, but we do not realize how closely we watch the people that live with us in our daily life. The thought process will always end up with the conclusion that I am a mere reflection of the people that I chose to keep with me. It always amuses me how I always start breaking out new bodily gestures and behavior when the related people aren’t around me at that point of time, at least most of the time. It nudges me to wonder if it was my body’s way of remembering their presence and comfort when they weren’t present to provide it themselves. Lives change and people come and go, we cannot always get to keep whom we want and let go of whom we do not want. But it feels warm to know that we won’t completely forget some people completely even if our consciousness lets the memories slip away, for our muscles have memorized those people in its own way.