Memories are strange beasts. They're stories that tell us about ourselves. We'd like to think that the narrator is reliable but they change and morph much of the story for the sake of protecting our sense of self from the ugly realities of the situation. And false memories can be implanted and cultivated so that we are sure that something happened a certain way when the factual record is entirely different.
I've been thinking about memory a lot of late with all of this writing about my history going on. I honestly don't know what to think about what I've been putting down on the page. Some of this material comes from a period that I don't consciously remember and I have blocked much of it out because of how awful it was. So, I sit down and look at what I've written and try to determine the veracity of it. This is very difficult when you have been gaslighted into believing that you are untrustworthy for many years simply because you are female.
It's been almost a decade since I was dealing with the people who did that. But it is still something that echoes. I second guess just about everything I write. I learned a trick. The first response I have to a situation is my response, the second one is the conditioning. Thus, the first thing I write is likely to be the true memory where as the rebuttal of it is the false memories that were pushed into me at a young age to cover up the monstrosity of my youthful experiences.
I don't know what I'm going to do with the manuscript when it is finished. I have come to realize that I am revealing where all the bodies are buried and that there has to be a good chance that I'm going to see some painful repercussions from it. Still, something inside me says I should finish this manuscript and publish it. Because it's a story that's been trying to come out of me for the last two decades. I can't fight it anymore. It's just caused me too much pain to resist writing this stuff down.
At the same time, the process of writing it is excruciating. Who wants to look in the face of their memories of being sexually assaulted at a young age? Who wants to stare down the memories of people you trusted cutting you down emotionally on a regular basis because they scorned you for the accident of your birth? No one wants to admit that horrific things happened to them. At the same time, I think the only way I am going to find healing from it is if I write it all down and do something with it.
I have one notebook full of this stuff. I have a second notebook almost full. I wasn't planning on writing this stuff when I grabbed that notebook. But this is all that seems to come out right now. It invades my sleep. I have been having nightmares that are both surrealistically symbolic of what happened and straight up memories of what happened for months now. I'm on medication to help me sleep. But it wears off around two in the morning and that's the witching hour for me. The Hag of Horror rides me and I'm left in the morning exhausted.
I joke about how I am powered by coffee. But rare nights where I get a decent night of sleep, like last night, the coffee isn't as needed for me to function. I still drink it copiously but that is because it has become a comfort food in the face of all the stress I'm dealing with. The fact that it is low carb means I can drink just about as much as I want, as long as I remember to shotgun water after.
I'm struggling with my blood sugar levels right now. They've been high in the morning. I've been trying to find ways to bring it down but it's not working so great. I get lethargic and grumpy when my blood sugar is high. Put that together with a bad night of sleep and I'm not the happy, cheerful mom when it is time to get the kids up and put them on the bus to school. I am finding that I have to wait to eat breakfast, so I get to be hungry on top of all that. So, I am left sitting around for an hour trying to figure out what to do with myself as my kids are trying to play and get ready for school at the same time.
I will admit, though the kids will screw around in the morning, we've yet to have missed the bus. That is at least one positive thing going on here despite the fact that I'm a grumpy zombie in the morning. I've started doing some of my charity crochet in the morning because writing is difficult. I have a box that is just about full of hats for the preemies at the hospital in Elmira, NY. The spinning guild is donating to them this year. I'm stalled on the scarf that I've been knitting for the homeless because I am bored with the pattern. My mother-in-law suggested that I turn the scarf into a cowl. It's almost long enough for that. I think I'm going to do so and then use the remainder of the yarn for a scarf in a different pattern. Yesterday, I made some bad still life sketches of empty jars. I'm not going to upload them because they're almost stick figure bad. I may go back to them and try to add in more details. But, for doing the image based off of nothing but memory, it's not too horrible.
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