Motivated forgetting is a debated concept referring to a psychological defence mechanism in which people forget unwanted memories, either consciously or unconsciously. There are times when memories are reminders of unpleasant experiences that make people angry, sad, anxious, ashamed or afraid. Motivated forgetting is a method inwhich people protect themselves by blocking the recall of these anxiety-arousing example, if something reminds a person of an unpleasant event, his or her mind may steer towards unrelated topics. This could induce forgetting without being generated by an intention to forget, making it a motivated action. There aretwo main classes of motivated forgetting: repression is an unconscious act, while suppression a conscious form of excluding thoughts and memories from awareness.
"Certainly you've heard of motivated forgetting?"
John looks up from examining the bruises along his knuckles (punched a man in the face, just for looking at him the wrong way), frowning at the relaxed, blank face of his therapist. Not Ella, because Mycroft Holmes paid her off ages ago, but somebody else, a pretty, blonde woman with an accent that's not quite American but less than British, and heels that hurt John's head when she walks against her hard wood floor. She's the kind of therapist who works out of her own home, who has a house full of paintings and china glass and hand-painted wood, and John doesn't like her one bit, but Mycroft won't have him seeing anybody else. It's an unspoken statement - I'll take care of you when you cannot, because you took care of my brother when I could not. John doesn't think to deny the help. He doesn't think it'd be any use.
"You aren't actually suggesting I intentionally forget Sh-" he swallows hard. Can't say it, never can. The therapist makes a note on her notepad.
"It came up in discussion with a - colleague of mine," she says, and the curve of her lip is fake. John wants to be able to read her, read her like /he/ could, but all he can tell is that she changed the colour of her hair recently, not why. New boyfriend, perhaps. She doesn't seem like the type.
"A colleague," John repeats, deadpan. "Whatever happened to doctor-patient confidentially, hmm?"
There's a tightness around her eyes - they both know who she's talking about. "It's quite controversial, I'm aware," she lays her hands flat on her notebook. "But it's a method used by soldiers after returning from war, for decades. You can relate."
I don't want to forget, Sherlock, he wants to say. Why would I want to forget Sherlock, why would I want to forget the way he'd pop up his coat collar, or the way he took his tea, forget how he never ate and left body parts in the fridge, forget the dead look in his eyes when he fell from the roof of St Bart's, forget his face, beautiful, always, covered in blood -
But he doesn't, and when he leaves the session thirty minutes later, he can't remember what Sherlock's shoes looked like.
~
John is in a coffee shop - a small one, on the corner of two streets whose names he never bothered to learn, with the Sun held to his nose and a cup of cold tea in front of him. The barista who's swung by several times comes around again, another smile on her face, and John doesn't have the heart to tell her she has lipstick on her teeth. Maybe she likes him. Sherlock would know.
He has to stop that. That's the point, isn't it?
He's spent the last two weeks shifting through old medical journals he pulled from a storage unit in his sister's name, from his days in Uni, looking for something, anything. He never particularly focused on psychology (he should have, he thinks with a bitter laugh), but he remembers hearing one lecture that Mike suggested he take after being told that John had intentions of joining the army. It was precisely about what John's therapist had said about soldiers suppressing memories - John fell asleep with the notes in his hand.
He dreamt of Sherlock, but he didn't remember what they were doing.
He turns back to his newspaper. He doesn't think of Sherlock, he doesn't think of the last words he said, of the way he was a machine and human all at one time, he doesn't.
There's an article in the Sun - One Year Since the Fall of the Riechenbach Hero.
He turns the page.
John doesn't remember how many sugars Sherlock took in his coffee.
~
It's not that John has trouble forgetting - studies show that one can consciously forget something upon instruction - it's just the process of letting the memory go. He thinks of Sherlock's mind palace, how he would store some things (like Elvis Presley) and delete others (like astronomy), and not for the first time, John wished he were here. Just so he could show him how. He imagines Sherlock would demonstrate with his hands - he tended to, though John didn't think he was aware of that - would press a finger to his own temple and then John's, and look John in the eye, and John would lean forward and kiss him because he's all he's ever wanted. His mouth tingles, like he'd pressed salt to his lips, and he touches it unconsciously.
John lays his head back on the couch and tries to black out his mind, he does, he really does. He tries to delete it all together, smother it with other things, bury it behind layers of things that should matter, things that are important. He ends up replaying the last words Sherlock ever said to him, over and over, a track set on repeat, while he builds a room inside his head. It looks like 221B, but if he goes up the stairs there's his childhood bedroom, and that's where he stores Harry and his parents, his time in the war and his friends. It's small, it's so small compared to the vastness of Sherlock inside his head, taking up all the space like he always did. He doesn't know how Sherlock built his mind palace, doesn't know how he used it - John's was always just closing his eyes and picturing things, a technique he hasn't used since studying for exams in high school. He does that now, keeps his eyes shut, Sherlock telling him goodbye in the background while he packs away imaginary clothes and beakers, while he faces pictures the other way and pushes a violin case under the couch.
When he's done, he can't remember the colour of Sherlock's favourite scarf.
~
Mary Morstan is everything a human being should be.
They meet the same way John met Sherlock - Mike Stanford introduces them, because Mike has a habit of bringing the most important people into his life (John really ought to get him a gift basket of some sort, he, too, is looking a little worse for wear), and before John even really knows what's happening Mary's on his arm, and their having dinner.
It's the first time he hasn't thought about Sherlock since his death.
When he takes Mary Morstan home, and into his bed, when she sighs his name and presses her lips and hands, soft, delicate, gentle, all rounded curves (Sherlock was bones and hard edges, like glass slicing at John until was nothing), against his skin, he falls in a completely different way.
When Mary stays with him, and he wakes up in the middle of the night, he can't remember why he can't breathe and he decides that maybe that was the point all along.
~
"Who's this then?" Mary asks him while they sit together on her (their) bed and unpack John's bags and boxes, shelving things, and deciding what needs to go to storage and what doesn't. John's never moved in with a girlfriend before, never had the time, and it's new and exciting, and has his heart racing in a way that it hasn't in
nineteen months.
John looks up from where his fingers were touching the edges of his old medical journals, setting all but one aside to put away in storage, and Mary's wearing a smile that makes his chest fuzzy. She's beautiful, beautiful in way he's only seen once before, especially like this; no make-up, her hair pushed haphazardly to the nape of her neck, all white teeth and large blue eyes. There's a photograph - crinkled, nothing of import - dangled between her fingers, and suddenly the world isn't so pretty anymore.
"Oh that's," he clears his throat and reaches, tears the photograph from her fingers in aw ay that has her jumping (he feels awful, wants to apologise, can't bring himself to), and folds it up, creasing it. "It's nothing."
She looks frightened and concerned, but he kisses her, and neither of them can remember what the photograph was of.
(As Mary sleeps next to him, John touches the face in the picture - cheekbones and intelligent eyes - an there's a name in his head but he doesn't allow himself to feel it.)
"Moved in with your girlfriend, yes?" his therapist asks him, and when John smiles, it doesn't feel so fake.
"Yes, things are going fantastic," his face hurts.
"Good, that's good," she grins right back, jots down /Progress/ on her notepad. John feels good. He feels great.
"How's the method we discussed going?"
"Fine, just fine."
"What did he call his website?"
"I - I don't know."
And then he doesn't feel so great anymore.
John meets Mycroft Holmes one more time before getting a call from his therapist saying she won't be seeing him anymore. Mycroft passes him an unmarked prescription bottle, says, "Beware of the side effects," and disappears into the rain, an umbrella propped open over his head and a cigarette in his mouth.
He frowns down at the bottle. He doesn't remember how he met Mycroft.
~
He takes the medication anyway. He thinks he shouldn't - Mary questions him - but he's still dreaming of Sherlock falling and turning into a bird and flying far away, far away, and then picking John up and carrying him and dropping him into the ocean, and he always wakes up drowning, and he just wants to breathe again. So he does. He swallows one, just one, because he's still a doctor.
From then on, things become easier to forget.
(They go to 221B Baker Street just one more time to get John's things, and Mary's the one that tells the cabbie gently where they're going because John can't remember.)
~
When John proposes to Mary and she says yes, he can't remember the consulting detective's name.
~
And then, it happens, all at once, like a freight train coming at him, full speed, won't stop, won't ever.
It's too loud in here; too hot. John hates this place, to be quite honest - its showy and flashy on the outside, has outrageous prices, but the food isn't really all the spectacular, and John swears he saw a roach sneak iinto the kitchen earlier. As it is, it's Mary's favourite, and so here is, the just a few weeks before their wedding, wishing he wasn't.
The restaurant claims to be French, and the menu is even so (he thinks it's more Italian than French, though he doesn't voice it.) Mary speaks it jaggedly, just enough to be able to suggest to John what to order, and he gives her a smile like he knows what she's going on about.
"I'll be right back, love," Mary tells him and with a squeeze of his hand, she's off and John's sitting alone. (Alone, he doesn't like being alone, can't remember why.) A part of him jokes that this would be the worst time or a waiter to come, and so when he sees movement off to his side he doesn't think about it. When he hears the scrap of a chair, he doesn't think about it, and when he hears the clearing of a throat, he doesn't think about it. "This isn't snail is it?" he asks, still frowning down at the menu. He looks up, because he's assumed that Mary would know - but it's not Mary, it's not, it's somebody else.
The man is cheekbones and intelligent eyes, and he feels familiar, and like home.
"John -"
"Pardon me," John interrupts, leaning forward like he's anticipating something, "But -"
The man is silent.
"Who are you?"