Memories

I had an interesting happen today that I forgot about, I was watching the show with the blonde medium. She was giving a reading or whatever she does for a man. His mother came through and a lot of the things she said reminded me of a situation that had happened when my oldest daughter was just about a month old.

I had my daughter on the bed wrapped in a towel after a bath getting ready to get her clothes on. She was fussy because she was cold, but all of the sudden she quit crying and was staring at the ceiling laughing and cooing. It was in December so the room was chilly, but all of the sudden I was warm. It felt like I was being hugged. After I got done with my daughter I got a phone call from my dad telling me that my grandmother had passed away early in the day. I told him I knew already because she visited me.

It is strange to think about the things you remember at random times. I am talking about this because I have so much of my memory that is lost. I am told that it is due to the trauma I have experienced in my life. Trauma makes the brain protect us from reliving the event over and over again. The brain has safeguards to help move on from the trauma. Well I lost a whole chunk of my life. There is about 10 years missing from my memory.  I was took my photo album to therapy one time, I was looking at the pictures like I was looking at someone else’s life. What is that?

I have read several books about trauma and all of them state that the brain is altered due to the trauma. It sucks! The memories I lost are in a time of my life I was a mother of three children. Try to explain to your kids that you don’t remember times with them. the big thing in my life is that during that time I was an ogre to my children because of my trauma. I took out my anger and frustration on them. I had so much guilt about the way I was to my kids. Also the fact that as they now are adults they are having issues. Some is from unresolved issues and some is from heredity.  You know Nature vs. Nurture?

I think about that thing we say, “I don’t even remember what I ate yesterday.” I know that may not be the most important thing in the scheme of things, but what does that say about what really is going through our minds. I personally do brain games to improve my memory so that I can save the important stuff. For me it is “If it is not wrote down it does not exist!” I have lists all over the place. I have a journal that I record what I do everyday and make sure I try to accomplish some task every day.

I truly hate that there are things I can’t remember, but I know there is an underlying fear of losing everything. Dementia or Alzheimer’s. It is real and no true “thing” we can do to stop one of those things. Hopefully there will be a cure soon.

I am hopeful, I am trying to live in the present and not worry about the past or the future. I can’t change what happened in the past and I can’t predict the future so I have decided to treasure each moment.

I do get a few sweet memories every now and then, I also get the crappy flashes of the bad (thank God for therapy skills) and I try to savor the happy and work through the awful. Gotta love the trauma brain.

I hope as you read this it gives you some insight to how you handle your own memories. Are you taking the time to enjoy the good ones and working through the bad ones? Are you avoiding some memories because it is so bad that you just wish you could forget? Is there that one wonderful memory that you sit and daydream about it?

I could go on and on, but I think I just want to let all of us to think about this memory of reading this. Hahaha…..

Lunatic Fringe Forever………………