Floundering
I have stared at this computer screen for the last 2 hours and I am still blank. I am floundering. Figuring out a reasonable way to combine two sets of childhood memories – those remembered and those repressed – to come up with a whole life really should not be this difficult. But right now it’s just confusing.
Let me clarify that I am not denying that these new, traumatic memories are mine. Not anymore. When they first surfaced I fought them, determined they must be just some fantasy my brain was concocting. That proved false pretty quickly, especially when there was collaborating evidence to confirm them. So, I tried another track. I said, “yes, of course, these things happened”, but then I pictured the little girl I had been at the time and felt sad those things happened to her. Not really to ME, but to HER. I understand, intellectually, that the HER is ME. I was the little girl. But I still have some distance from it so these memories still don’t feel totally real yet.
Journaling
20 years ago I struggled with PTSD. I now know this was triggered by the death of the psychopath who had terrorized me for so long. (At least recovering these memories is explaining a few things.) During that ordeal I created a journal as part of my self-help healing plan. I called it “Remembering”. For months I recorded every childhood memory – big and small – that was frozen in time in my brain. None of them were happy memories so it was a painful process, yet it helped tremendously. The glaring intensity that had surrounded those memories my entire life faded as I placed them somewhere else for safe keeping. The relief that journal brought made the struggle to write it worth it.
I look at that journal today and just shake my head. I only remembered a small fraction of my life when I wrote that. Again, I have an explanation as to why I had so few memories before from my childhood.
Now I have a new journal filled with many more memories, memories that are on a whole different level of horrific. Naturally, I thought about rewriting the “Remembering” journal adding all the memories I had wiped away. But that just sounds even more painful than before. Surely there is some simpler, easier, less agonizing way to remove the invisible barrier between what I remembered before and what I remember now. They are both scenes from my life.