Memories

Distorted fragments of history

I’ve never had the best memory. People, places, and experiences seem to fade with time. Details distort, feelings change. I do write down some things. Some major events can be tracked down in a (mostly) factual article. But these accounts - memories of myself and others - are often highly skewed. Emotions mangle the facts and obscure the truth.

I did a dumb thing the other day while chasing memories. I went into the attic and retrieved a neon pink tote bag circa 1990’s. It’s stuffed full of relics spanning the decade, mostly keepsakes of middle school and high school. In this bag was a diary dated 1993, and part of me wishes I would have never opened it.

The first assault was the immature writings of 11/12 year old me. I realize that being a diary it was supposed to have been free of judgement, but oh boy is middle-aged me judging the hell out of younger me. I also realize the transition from elementary school to middle school is filled with all kinds of hormonal emotions and trauma, but dang. I was kind of stupid. (I will admit, my spelling has only improved because of the invention of auto-correct.)

Once I got past the insanity of hate and love extremes, I was flooded with memories of events I remembered, but had no idea they were all from the same year. Those memorable life events that stick with you - lost pets, new friends, and big changes - were all recorded in the twelve month span.

The historic floods are not surprisingly missing from my childhood account, as I was a hot mess of preteen and the world was moving around me. This overly hyped media event was a blip on my radar, reduced to flashes of riding my bike through puddles, a flooded basement, and dancing in the rain.

One impressionable mundane experience I’ve thought about recently. A day exploring in the forest, and I wind up with a strange, irrational fear of ducks. Up until the other day, my memory suggested I was alone in the woods. According to my diary, I was not.

It’s frustrating to know that your brain is hiding certain facts from you. When you just can’t remember. Is a part of you purposely hiding this event for protection purposes? Or were there bigger moments overshadowing these minor life occurrences? Was the bigger lesson more important than the minor details of the situation?

Oddly enough, the childhood acquaintance with me that day in the woods is why I went on this unplanned adventure down memory lane. Instead of facts, I’m finding that my memory and my wild writings of adolescence are not matching up. The accounts stored in my head of this person are not at all the raw emotions untainted by time, scribbled in various colored inks by an over emotional child. This person I thought I remembered was not just a frenemy that I grew to dislike and fully distance myself from as I aged. She was a real friend. And I essentially deleted her from my memories. Why?

I want to dig deeper into this time period, and into this person. I hesitate, warning myself that there are probably reasons I shouldn’t go digging. I put the diary back in the hot pink bag, yet the bag itself still remains on my bedroom floor. “The past is in the past, you’ve moved on,” I try to tell myself.

What would be the point of knowing, anyway?

The bright pink reseeding hollyhocks of my childhood have turned mostly white, or pale pink like the one above. Some still remain bright colors, yet many have faded.