Perceptions of Memory
You never know when a memory isn’t recalled correctly. However, when people around tell you that it didn’t happen the way you said it did, it makes you feel crazy.
This happened to me a lot when I was growing up. My entire family told me often that I didn’t remember things correctly. The things I experienced were wrong and never happened. What actually happened was… and it was generally some tale of how reasonable my mother was and how helpful my dad was trying to be and how wonder my sister was as she saved me.
Understand, I don’t remember much of what I experienced as a kid. Those memories are in rotting boxes in the back caverns of my mind, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to recover them.
What I do remember was being confused and frustrated because I knew what I saw. I knew what I heard. I knew what I felt.
And so, part of my journey into adulthood was spent understanding the human brain. Not in sciency ways. I’m not a psychologist, though, I would dearly love to get a degree in psychology and study people. I would love-love-love that. No. I read science journals, articles, and papers on these topics, and I collected people’s stories.
In the collection of stories, I would get one person’s side, and then I would find the other person and get their side. And there are a few things I discovered in my own observations. People remember things based on:
Their social standing in that situation.
Where they were emotionally and how big their emotions were in that moment.
And if they ate breakfast. Or lunch or dinner. Where their blood sugar level was.
I didn’t start making that connection until my daughter was diagnosed with Type I diabetes.
The reality is that we don’t remember things correctly. We may think we do, but we don’t. There’s a reason that eye-witness statements aren’t that great. What we remember changes if we’re afraid versus safe, with people we trust versus people we’re on guard with.
It really came to head when my oldest step-daughter told me that she doesn’t live in a safe environment.
She lives in my house.
Inside, I was coming unglued. I’ve made her home as safe as I possibly can. There are no raised voices. We handle disputes with a level head. Like… there’s been a lot of work done by the two women who live here who brought the baggage that can destroy people. Like, we did a lot of work here and to have her say that? I was like, “Wow. You really just want a world with no consequence because consequence is hard.”
But then I recalled that she remembers things differently. That conversation we had where I forced her to remain in the room so we could have the conversation, where I was shaking because I was so angry, but I kept my voice steady and my words weren’t overly sharp as I just made dinner? She remembers being attacked.
The crazy thing is that we build our entire lives on how we remember things, on how we remember our lives.
Imagine where we’d be if we remembered our lives… kinder? Who will my daughter become if she remembered me keeping my shit together and just helping her face a difficult situation instead of attacking her because her emotions were so big in that moment? What if we create out own chaos by interpreting the actions of those around us in a way that just makes our lives harder? Imagine if she thinks everyone who opposes her is attacking her through her entire life?
That is just one of the things I delve into in When the Dust Still Glows. How can I shape my life by focusing on how I want to remember my experiences? I created an entire character, Wyn, to help me through that.
And… I’m really excited because I’m meeting her in my writing session in… six minutes. So! Come read what I discover.
