If a memory could be rented, would returning it feel like forgetting or eviction?

Losing something you had borrowed and come to rely on would not feel like an absence so much as a removal, which suggests memory feels owned rather than merely held. We treat our recollections as possessions, though almost nothing about them was chosen or paid for, and they change without our permission anyway.

Hold your memories a little more loosely, then, particularly the ones you use to explain yourself. They have been edited by every retelling. And where a memory is causing you pain, it can help to remember that you are not obliged to keep re-examining it in order to remain its rightful owner.