Actively Awaiting The Moment I Forget You

Charles Baker Strahan

Actively Awaiting the Moment I Forget You

Oil on canvas

Actively Awaiting the Moment I Forget You depicts the psychological terrain of returning to oneself after a narcissistic abusive relationship. The collapsed figure in the foreground lies in grass that shifts from gray to faint green near his face—an articulation of the slow reanimation of spirit, the incremental return of vitality as one begins to reclaim a sense of self.

Behind him rises a church façade, symbolizing the reconstitution of inner faith and connection to the world. The fence before it marks the threshold between isolation and belonging, between being held apart and stepping back into life. A suspension bridge stretches beyond—an image of the suspended journey toward freedom, the looping mental cycles that delay forward motion even when healing has begun.

To the right stands a smaller figure, observing the scene as if witnessing his own past. He is positioned beside a lamp post that is literally missing its top—there is no light at all. This absence is deliberate: it represents not an unlit path, but the total removal of guidance, clarity, and illumination during and after psychological harm. The figure's stance beside this incomplete structure captures the essence of trying to orient oneself without any reliable external or internal "light" to navigate by.

The title, intentionally paradoxical, conveys the truth of trauma: to actively await the moment you forget is to realize that forgetting never arrives. What one actually seeks is the transformation of memory—its loss of power to imprison, and its integration into a healed and coherent self.