posted December 25, 2011 01:43 AM            

Memory is a supremely important tool for every creature alive. I find a strong significance with it in emotional health though. The reason vacations for example, are of value to us is because we can remember the experience and bask in it. I remember watching a ted talk a few years ago on memory, and the speakers said something akin to "if you won a free vacation in which it would be the most amazing experience you could possibly imagine, all expenses paid. However, there is the condition that you will have your memory erased at the end of it. Would you still go?" Think about it, would you pass it up. What value is a good experience? It shows you how important memory is.

I have struggled with depressive spells for a while through my life, and a good chunk of the time it hasn't been justified either. Lately though, I have been feeling a different form of depression. I have had the feeling that I am "not really there", as if I can't recall with full clarity the life I am living. Things are mostly good for me and I have no right to complain. It seems that I am having a harder time remembering the past, even in the short term. Things feel like a blur more often then not. Finding the root of why things have been a blur is proving to be a bit hard, but I have one idea (although I am not certain with it).

One thing that has been essential with me remembering the past, or at least attaching important memories to it, is sectionalizing time periods, and attaching music to it. Music and sound in general is very important to me, and I feel a strong emotional connection to most if not all music I like. When I am truly connected to it, I remember where I was, what I was doing, and how I felt during that time period. It's not automatic but I can make myself recall it if I tell myself. Sectionalized life is easy when your in school. Now that I am in grad school this line has blurred more though. Things are more diffuse, I am not required to shift mental gears as often as I did when I was an undergrad. I drift like a fog from one class or teaching assignment to another. What's amazing is this a product of me letting to of severe anxiety issues I can have, and becoming far more productive. I have detached (just some) from what I do and think about. I get even better grades, I am more fair, and overall much more highly functional. It's even brought me more happiness. Yet, some happiness seems to be drifting.

Now that I am home in New Jersey (where I grew up) for the holidays, I have been given the chance to recall my life in Oregon. In absence of that environment, I can allow my memory of the area, my room, the lab, ect to flow back to me. One thing I have noticed is I don't feel very present there in my memories. Just a few times. A few times when I felt an emotional stressor, intensity, or focus. It's making me consider if I have not been trying hard enough. Something I have felt I have been doing. I have little reason to hold back. There is this esoteric sense that I might burn myself out. I feel healthy and fulfilled physically, and I must fear that I will lost that (it's the first time I have really acheived it) if I push my energy further and burn the candle brighter.

Things don't have much significance. That's not to say that they don't though. It's more, I am not allowing things to have significance. Why? Because anything significant that has gone on has been negative or bad. I have experienced a high level of pain during undergrad, and I don't want to go back. I have changed my outlook, and myself a ton after graduating. Fixing the problems I have with myself. Now when anything bad happens, I dissociate from it. I refuse to allow myself to ruminate or let it feel dangerous or harming. I don't want to run the risk of having my productivty go down again. Yet, it's not allowing me to remember the life I am living well. The highs and lows I am so used to, are mostly gone, but were they a key roll to my function, and my life and remembering? Something so key to happiness. Feeling present. Simply being there.

Something has been missing though. Deeper friendship and deeper connection. I don't have any close friends in Oregon yet, and I must keep looking, allow myself to open, and reinvent the methods I go about it, it will be a work in progress and I will find them. I must admit though, despite that I have nothing to complain about... I don't have much to cheer about either. I am missing excitement, fun, joy. I may have inadvertadly pushed that out. I believe I may have overcompensated.

Looking back at my musical intake by the date... Things have been pretty standard, and good. I feel that I have dissociated too far. Avoiding pain has been great, but I have let go too far and am not expressing myself enough. Something I have known for a while.

While writing this I have come to an interesting conclusion. The lack of remembering and feeling like things are a blur, is stemming from the fact that I am not opening up and expressing myself freely to connect with others. Putting myself in situations to feel close with others. It is what gives me a large portion of my happiness and significance. In order for me to remember more clearly I must connect more deeply. Dissociating like I have been is meerly a defense mechanism at this point, but it does come at a price.

Remembering, it's so key. In a nostalgic fashion our memories flood back and we recall everything in an instant, with full clarity. No need to process it, it's all there. We experience it as if we are there again. We don't often take the time to consider how important our memories are. It IS the source of all of our happiness, sorrow, experience, everything. The ability to make new, clear memories of our experiences is often lost as trivial. Perhaps by more actively appreciating my memories, I can create the more strongly with significance. I'll find a way, somehow. At least now I know the source.

If I know the shape of the lock, I can fashion the key to open it.

posted December 25, 2011 02:54 AM            

Yes, we cannot live life to the fullest when we suppress our memories of pain. Because in suppressing memories of pain we ALSO suppress memories of happiness. And in suppressing memories of happiness, we lose our ability to be present and fully connected with those around us.

Perhaps a new year resolution is in the making! Resolve to remember everything, the good and the bad. Resolve to re-create the bad as YOU are the creator of your experience. And resolve to live in the present with no holding back of the past.

posted December 25, 2011 07:59 AM            

i really know what you are talking about. i grew up in a "false" environment, where my parents were divorced but my mother faked a happy family with her second husband who she separated eventually. i didn't know my real father and thought her husband was the one, and in order to conceal the existence of my real father, she did not talk about the past and i never saw any photos of me from the time we were with my real father. i don't blame her though, we had to move to a smallish town and divorce was still a taboo back then, i would have been bullied otherwise.

but because of this, for many many years i suffered from the lack of root feeling. i wanted to belong so bad and never felt that i had a steady ground to stand on. i would make many friends, but in the end feel like there was no one. i trusted easily but at the same time didn't trust anyone in a true sense. i feel like there is a big vacant hole in my childhood.

i've made much improvement in the last few years though. i used to be an extremely lonely person. i lived in big communities where there was no privacy and new people coming into our open doors 24/7. i had no sense of needing privacy, i just could not have "enough" of people. i wanted to be among them so bad. i didn't exist when there was no one around me.

posted December 25, 2011 08:29 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by lechien:
(((hug))) you can make friends here.

i really know what you are talking about. i grew up in a "false" environment, where my parents were divorced but my mother faked a happy family with her second husband who she separated eventually. i didn't know my real father and thought her husband was the one, and in order to conceal the existence of my real father, she did not talk about the past and i never saw any photos of me from the time we were with my real father. i don't blame her though, we had to move to a smallish town and divorce was still a taboo back then, i would have been bullied otherwise.

but because of this, for many many years i suffered from the lack of root feeling. i wanted to belong so bad and never felt that i had a steady ground to stand on. i would make many friends, but in the end feel like there was no one. i trusted easily but at the same time didn't trust anyone in a true sense. i feel like there is a big vacant hole in my childhood.

i've made much improvement in the last few years though. i used to be an extremely lonely person. i lived in big communities where there was no privacy and new people coming into our open doors 24/7. i had no sense of needing privacy, i just could not have "enough" of people. i wanted to be among them so bad. i didn't exist when there was no one around me.

it took a pretty terrible violation of boundary by parasitic people for me to learn how important it is to have my own space and time. now i feel more balanced and feel content with my self. i feel that i treat myself better.

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Sorry you got through this, lechien, but I'm also happy for you because you are definitely better off now for that experience.
I notice the people I like are usually those with similar backgrounds. I grew up very attached to a father who was nonexistent (physically and emotionally). He still is emotionally distant, a really unhappy old man. I don't think I ever felt loved from my father as his daughter and it's pretty probable that I will never have a chance to feel this connection. I have always idealized love the way I idealized the father figure. I would fall in love with people who were unavailable one way or another the way my father always has been and I would form relationships with men who loved me to the point of putting me on a pedestal never truly knowing the real me and love me for it.
It's hard to try to give something to yourself that was supposed to have been there growing up and it wasn't. Yes, it feels like a hole. Life will offer the chances to fill that up and to figure out the whole thing. I'm glad you have reached that point, Lechien.

posted December 25, 2011 09:42 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by anongrl10:

It's hard to try to give something to yourself that was supposed to have been there growing up and it wasn't. Yes, it feels like a hole. Life will offer the chances to fill that up and to figure out the whole thing. I'm glad you have reached that point, Lechien.

optimistically,
Anongrl10

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aww, you are so sweet. i'm sorry about your relationship with your father. i can relate to it.

posted December 25, 2011 11:12 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by lechien:
it's so strange to think of how memory, especially old memory, works. i understand that it's much to do with the process of "keep remembering". if it's not reminded often, memory does not stay. if my mother/family would have shown me photos and talked about the times, i'm sure i would have thought of this as "memory". but in fact, it's just the story whether verbal or visual that stay.

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posted December 25, 2011 02:36 PM            

i usually remember more of what i read instead of what i hear though

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I once saw a sign that said "sin is death" but if "all deaths are suicide (linda goodman)" and suicide is sin, then shouldnt "death is sin" be more appropriate?

posted December 25, 2011 09:35 PM            

“Memory is a funny thing. When I was in the scene, I hardly paid it any mind. I never stopped to think of it as something that would make a lasting impression, certainly never imagined that eighteen years later I would recall it in such detail. I didn't give a damn about the scenery that day. I was thinking about myself. I was thinking about the beautiful girl walking next to me. I was thinking about the two of us together, and then about myself again. It was the age, that time of life when every sight, every feeling, every thought came back, like a boomerang, to me. And worse, I was in love. Love with complications. The scenery was the last thing on my mind.”

― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

posted December 26, 2011 02:56 AM            

quote:

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Originally posted by Fondue Knight:
For some reason when I hear certain songs it reminds me of what video game I was playing when I was listening to those albums. Some songs/albums bring me back to certain places. I can think of one in particular that brings me back to walking on campus in the dead of winter when I was in college. But yeah, I relate to the whole detaching and drifting in a fog thing. I don't remember much of my childhood. I know it was rocky for a good portion of it, but most of the specifics escape me. I'll find myself remembering more recent painful memories (maybe from the past 10 years) when I'm trying to sleep, and instead of going through that pain again I force myself to think about something else because what can I do about the past? It's done and I can't change it. But I don't think I really allowed myself to embrace the pain. I detach from it as soon as possible.

I'm not even going to assume that was very coherent. It's Christmas and I'm stuffed with food and booze.

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It was quite coherent actually!

posted December 26, 2011 08:43 PM            

quote:

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Originally posted by anongrl10:

It was quite coherent actually!

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I have trouble sometimes (especially when I'm not completely... erm... sober) of keeping a train of thought on its tracks. Sometimes I worry people are going to react like: