Of shifting sentiments and the memory of scents

I'm having trouble getting to sleep, so might as well put my thoughts down here. Brain won't shut up again.

Thinking about leaving my feelings behind. Hard. Do-able? Maybe waiting for it to taper off isn't the right thing to do. Dealing with feelings always has to be proactive. What developed between us was not a rebound, but perhaps what makes me linger over it is rebound-ish in nature - perhaps loneliness is making me continue with it longer than it should be. Let's see what the next few weeks bring. A complete shift in mindset and circumstance should help. I want to gather those pieces of myself back.

Was also thinking about remembering smell. I was thinking about how Kev smells. Was thinking about how others before have smelt. And I realise I mostly can't recall offhand. I remember Kev's scent well because he was so recent, and I still care for him (I think that does make a difference). There's a vague recollection of the round, musky, slightly oily smell of Kelvin's cheek, but it has faded considerably (I can't remember what his hair smells like). But for most of the others who have come before, I find I can't quite remember, not as conjure-able memories anyway. There are shadows of memories, approximations of the shades of their smells, but not quite the striking way your nose remembers and fills your olfactory senses almost as if the smell was physically there again.

Here's the strange thing about smell. Our brain centre for smell resides very close to that for memory, but not that for articulation. It is also the most primal of our senses. Which means that we're challenged to find adjectives for smells. I find it hard to use my usual associations to actively recall what the men I cared about smelt like.

But every now and then, I'll pass by some place, and I'd smell something or someone, and WHAM! I'm suddenly hit by a strong sense of remembering, simply because that passing scent is so strongly reminiscent of someone I knew intimately. And for a moment, I'd look around, seeing if it really was that person lingering somewhere before the smell morphs as I move around it and I realise it is something/someone else. This happens especially so for the scent of WJ, my first and most powerful love.

But no one and nothing I've known has ever smelt like Kev. So unremarkable a scent, yet owned by none but him.