23.01.2019
Memory.
What is your first memory?
I do not know mine.
Since I was elven life has been a neverending cycle of being and forgetting for me. I would live, the time would pass, I would grow, change schools, fall in love, forget. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. In the space between there would always be a summer camp to keep my gears running, a two week or month long workout, a rest for the mind constantly living under pressure of school and family. It was almost like being someone else during these times in between.
I wasn’t paying that much attention to it or rather I was trying to avoid thinking about it. I am terrified of how many things I’ve forgotten. Good things, bad things, important and meaningless ones. They are all somewhere in my head, at least some of them I believe. But I constantly have access to only a chosen few. Only some highlights of my life, rarely do I remember something as a whole, in context...
My memories are usually in third person. Which only means they aren’t really memories but rather my own imagined pictures of these memories. I stand beside myself, I look at the room, the forest, the lake, my parent’s house. I change perspectives, I can see faces and sceneries. If I have photos I can almost drown myself inside of them. But am I remembering or am I just imagining how it went?
I have flashbacks. Sometimes. I do not know if I would call them flashbacks, really. They are feelings, voices that do not speak comprehensible words but rather tunes and emotions, movements, pain, tears, lightheadedness. Sometimes when I look at the old photos where I can see myself as I was when I was only 1 year old I feel like I can connect to that. If I close my eyes, if I let go of everything around me I can feel that moment inside of me. But I can’t think it. I can’t name it. I can’t talk about it. And I can’t remember because memories are strings of words and narrations that are somehow fiit into us - us as a whole.
I’m not whole at all.
There is fracturing inside of me. In my core. But on my surface as well. In my contradicting actions, facial and vocal expressions, words. I’m a paradox, I’m impossible. Sometimes, when I feel really bad, really really bad, the world feels fake. My body feels fake. My mind feels like I’ve manufcatured it. I can’t anchor myself to anything. There is here and now but who am I in that moment? Who are the people that matter to me? Who am I for them? Are we a family? Are we strangers pushed around by fate? By coincidences? Did we choose this or is it something else that pushed us into those constellations?
Questions remaining without answers.
I am oscillating between the past and the future and I cannot grab onto the present hard enough. It is a storm that has been swaying me, swaying my feelings, swaying my headspace. I am but a troubled and tired wanderer of my broken fantasies. A prisoner of my mind. A mourn at my own funeral.
One of the memories that for the longest time I believed to by my first was a memory of going down a small hill in a forest during the winter on a sleigh and falling flat on my face. I thought I remembered the tears, the pain, the redness of my face... How would I know my face was red? My nose? There wasn’t a mirror there. Did someone snap a photo? I haven’t seen it. Has my nose been red all the time until we returned to wherever we were sleeping? Or am I standing inside that memory and feeding myself a vision that never happened? At some point in that memory blood was running down my nose. But blood never run down my nose, it ran down my nose a few months ago after tonsillectomy. But before that? The blood is hot usually. Viscous. In the vision I had it all over my face. But that never happened.
So what happened? What the hell did happen?
I do know I fell from that sleigh during the winter. I’m not sure if my parents laughed at me or tried to console me. I was crying hard and I think they gave me their usual ‘come on, nothing happened’. Well, something happened for me...
So I thought this was my first memory. But a few years ago we were going through my old photos and I saw the pictures of my first birthday. And a video. They blew a lot of balloons for me. I really didn’t know what to do with them. We were staying at my great grandmother’s back then, my parent’s house was not even under construction yet. I was looking at it and I remembered distinctly a conversation my mother and grandmother were having. But I couldn’t understand a word. I would understand it now but since language is weird for children I guess I remember the sounds. I can’t recall it at the moment but I’m sure it was a memory when it hit me.
I learnt to speak fairly early into my life. At least that’s what my parents told me my whole life. I believe I could use sentences before I was two years old and I was pretty good with words. I wonder if I even knew what I was saying back then when I was saying things. I know I had some imagined words that had specific usage and my parents were trying to figure out what I was saying. One of them was ‘makapkat’ (sounding “mak-” as in the name “Mac”, “-kap-” as in “captain” and “kat” as in “cat”). I remember what it felt like to say that word but I don’t remember what I wanted to say. I’ve been told I used this word pointing at the wall near the sink. It is possible that I simply enjoyed what my mouth felt like when I was saying it.
I want to say that memory is becoming more and more important to me and the lack of memories is becoming more and more traumatizing. I do not know what is wrong with me. I do not know if it’s just the physiology in my brain that is not working right or trauma that is effectively blocking my memories. These factors do not rule out one another. It’s scary, especially when living in someone, being in an intimate relationship and just losing your memories with that person from 2, 3 years ago. Some of it is due to the fact that we went through a lot of stress and arguing in the past 5 years and it has for sure contributed to the fact that I forgot some things. But at the same time there were good memories we made. And they seem very distant right now.
I think the headache, or a migrene I guess, is here to stay. My self am shattered. Time goes by and the mornings are cruel as they were when in the past when everything was wrong. I’ve made mistakes but I also grew a little. Time itself never healed my wounds. They are stretched and etched all over my bodymind. I only wish to be whole.
