Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Navigation System

It's funny how an unfamiliar area can become known, but there's no way to undo that. Once a place becomes meaningful, that meaning sticks. For five months I drove the same route to work, not noticing or caring about the houses I was driving by or the places to eat. It was just foreign territory at the end of my 40-minute commute. Then I met him, and it turned out he lives along my thrice-weekly drive. Right in the middle of that neighborhood where I thought nobody really lived, the place that used to mean nothing. Now I can't get to work without experiencing the memories. There's that incredible Italian restaurant where he took me for our first real date. There's the gas station we trekked to for milk and beer on a snow day. And there goes the street where he lives. The destination that at first made me full of nerve endings, all tension and excitement, then comfortably familiar - knowing after a long night shift he would be there with oatmeal and a warm, sleepy smile.

I keep passing the Chipotle where I wish I didn't know his order by heart.
And the restaurant where we broke up over breakfast.

I removed his house from my favorites on my TomTom. I never needed to save it in the first place because after I went there the first time, a map was drawn on my brain in indelible ink. Deleting an icon on a 4.3-inch screen didn't do me much good. I never realized my sharp memory for details until they were all ones I wanted to forget. How is it even useful to remember what road we were on when he told me my brakes needed to be checked out? But I know why I remember it - because I thought it meant that he cared about my safety. I learned in 7th grade life science that the brain chooses to save memories that have some significance attached, and tosses the rest. So as long as I find it significant, I will always think about my brakes when I cross the intersection of College and Grant.

My college physiology courses dove deeper: it is the hippocampus where both long-term memories and cognitive maps for navigation are formed. So ultimately, science rules: it is impossible to separate emotional memories from spatial memory. I can't expect College Boulevard to eventually transform back into the meaningless blur it once was at 45 miles per hour.

All I can hope for is that with time, the feelings that seep out of the too-familiar buildings into my car, my heart, will numb. Because I know the memories are there to stay. Besides, if I really wanted to avoid those altogether, I would just take the highway.