Good afternoon campers, the fire is lit, the marshmallows are toasting, it's time to begin.....
Do you remember when.........? Of course you do, the question should be 'do you remember correctly?'. Do you remember it how I do? Do you remember it positively or negatively? Do you remember it vaguely or in all it's glorious detail? Do you remember it how you wanted it to be?
Memory is a very tricky thing, it can bring joy or pain, it can drive you nuts, it can be 'it's just on on the tip of my tongue' frustratingly annoying. It can be missing. Sometimes I wish mine was missing! Other times I feel that's an awful thing to wish.
Part of my condition is being able to recall almost all conversations I've ever had, it's a blessing and a curse. Comes in handy when you need to remember something important, not so handy when your ocd uses it to replay negative things or unkind words I've spoken, or to recall conversations from the past that cause you to pick fights with people in the present!!! I replay these things again and again in my head, buzzing quietly in the back of my mind like constant background noise. Not every conversation, just a select few at a time. They buzz and buzz and buzz, whirring round and round slowly getting louder and louder and louder until finally there they are, front and centre. This might take minutes, hours, days, even months, but eventually I'll crack and BOOM, there they are. Some times I can tuck them safely away in my brains basement, still aware they are there, but not having to deal with them. Sometimes I sit and worry about it, allow it to make me frown for a while and then finally shake it off. Other times I let it get the better of me, let it make the decisions, rake over old ground. I allow it to guide me into trouble and chaos, allow it to pick fights with people (who have no idea why!) try to get answers about past conversations that others can't even remember. Allows me to torture myself, to inflict pain deep within my soul, to suffocate my sanity. But are my memories right? Did I even have these conversations? Or is it all a figment of my sick and twisted ocd mind?
What if I ask someone why they said/did something and they deny it? Is it my memory at fault or theirs? Are they protecting themselves, have they genuinely forgotten, are they denying it to be mean or is my brain playing a deranged game with me?
What if I imagined it all? Am I now so crazy I'm making up the past???
So I try and say nothing, let it whirl around till I can bury it back deep inside, lurking, waiting, ready for its next great escape. And the times it does escape, well I add those conversations to the basement too, I just hope this basement is big enough!
It's not just conversations though, my brain finds new ways to play with my sanity.
My mum asked me the other day if I remembered an event in my past involving my dad, and I thought about it and no, I honestly couldn't remember, so then she asked what I do remember about him, and I have to confess not a lot, I seem to have wiped him from the memory banks! My brain did such a good job that it even convinced me that he wasn't there on trips we took as a family, that my mother assures me he was on!! Ok I don't get on with the man (I find it odd calling him dad in fact) but I was 16 when he left, surely he left some kind of impression in that time? If it wasn't for the fact the rest of my family had seen him, I'd go as far to say he doesn't even exist!! Maybe he doesn't and my family are having one of those mass hallucinations!!! But then that doesn't explain the man in the photos! Hmm maybe he does exist after all. The real question is, is my brain just being perverse or is it protecting me? If its protecting me, what from?
Considering my superpower of conversation recall, I can only recollect one conversation I had with my father and that's the last one we ever had, it didn't end well!!! But in 16 years we must have spoken? Must have had one moment where one of us made the other laugh or even smile?
That gets me thinking, how many other people have I wiped from my memory??? Why do some stay and others not make the cut? I'd like to say it depends on how they've treated me but then I think a lot more would be missing!! Maybe it has to do with how I treated them, or maybe my brain is trying to protect me after all. It's not doing a great job!!!!
So I guess I'll never know what's fact and what's fiction, whether it's protection or torture. So what to do? Maybe I keep burying it, hoping I'll keep it all contained and that will be good enough, but then I have to accept that occasionally there will be a breakout and I'll have to deal with the consequences as they occur.
It might be all in my head, but sometimes my head leaks!
So on that note, I'm off to don my rose tinted glasses and bathe in the warmth of a slightly oblique past.
Happy camping x x x
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