The Memory Burden

Picture this: your friend reminisces over an old photo album, gushing over how cute she looked in the party dress from her fourth birthday, and wishing that she had any actual recollection of it, other than the photos in her hand. You smile and nod, and before you realise it, you've blurted out, "Oh, I remember being that age vividly. Younger, even". "Must be nice," she replies, "My memory is awful. I barely remember anything from my childhood".

And then the images come flooding back and no matter how many times you shake your head and blink, they don't go away.

It's not nice. 

Sometimes remembering is not a gift. 

Sometimes memories are a burden. 

I have lots of photographs from my childhood but they show only the happy times. Films were expensive and developing them cost time and money which were often in short supply. We had to be selective with what we took photos of. Not like today where every phone has a built-in camera and everyone who boasts even the tiniest ounce of tech-ability has cloud storage coming out of their ears.

My memories aren't just from photos, though. Mine are real. Nobody would ever take a photograph of the things I remember; nobody else would want to remember them.

The Memory Burden is the name I've given to this first introductory post because, well, that's how I describe my memory. It is a heavy burden on me every single day and, as much as people light-heartedly say that they wish they could remember things, it really doesn't work like that. I have a dreadful memory for the day-to-day things: I will forget your birthday; I will just buy the whole supermarket if I don't take a list; and no matter how many times my husband tells me that Dutch people are from Holland, I still get confused and think they're German.

But my long-term memory, now there's the thing. Probably the only super power I'm ever going to have and I don't want it. 

The memories are so vivid that I am transported back to the time and place, almost as if I'm there. Not so much reliving it all the time; sometimes I'm a spectator as if it's a movie and I'm the only one in the audience. I can remember the clothes a person was wearing, the smell of the air freshener. I remember the taste of what I had had for lunch, or the texture still dancing on my tongue. More than that, though, I remember the thoughts I had in my mind during each particular memory and the way that certain things made me feel.

My memories have plagued me forever. I wish I could forget them but for some reason my brain won't allow me to. I understand psychology to a certain level (A Level, officially!) but from my own reading and experiences, I see that our minds can shut out certain memories in order to protect us from the pain or trauma associated with them. Mine seems to be doing the opposite and I'm not sure why. The only semi-logical reason I can come up with is that, for the most part, I'm the only one who knows about these things. I haven't ever spoken about them and so if I suddenly forget them, it's as if they never happened.

But they did happen.

So that's why I'm here. I've dug out a safe little space for myself right in my very own corner of the internet, and I'm finally going to release these memories. I'm going to share my burden and hope and pray that in doing so, I can finally find closure and be freed from these shackles I've worn forever. 

Stick around. It might get interesting.

And if not, I'll be here anyway. 

Unburdening my mind, one memory at a time.