The precious moments are all lost in the tide

[Alexander Nicholi]

A lot of very heavy things occur for us in our lives, both for the better and for the worse. On such an often occasion humans exhibit the behaviour of burying those bad moments, but something special happens and they end up burying the entirety of the memory along with it.

I remember about a half a year ago how good of a time I was having... I was having the time of my life. We had plenty of money around us for stupid shit and then some, we had a car with no running problems, we lived in the suburbs where I had mobility. We had people that we cared for and I was closing my old problems on a high note. In July the whole thing crashed so masterfully, as if it was rigged to fail! The very experience looked like it was logically wired to blow from the start, as if I was my own puppetmaster of demise... and running away from the fall I noticed I forgot all of those good times I had. I realized I destroyed them alongside any relations of the hurt.

Well, to you, I could ask simply has this happened to you or for you to share your story, but for more substance I'd like to ask... were you not to bury such a polar event in your life (I'm sure you can imagine your own instances), how would you handle the memory? What if you could change that memory? What would you do instead, or how would you have better liked to see things? How would you salvage what slipped away?

 

[pkmin3033]

They're swept away and nothing is what is seems, the feeling of belonging to your dreams.

Memories of bad moments in your life are poisonous things: it's all too easy to say what you could have done with the benefit of hindsight, or to see the moment as worse or better than it actually was. Memories fade with time, or become distorted to become something more than what they actually were. Your perspective changes, and you see things differently, particularly when you're growing up.

As a random, possibly irrelevant example, I remember being terrified of having a plaster taken off of my abdomen after I'd had my appendix removed, because I was convinced that my guts were going to fall out. It didn't happen (obviously) and I look back on it now and laugh, but I still remember the terror. But it holds no meaning whatsoever to me now.

I also remember being bothered immensely by things as a teen that seem petty and pathetic to me now. I wish I hadn't spent so much time angsting over them, yes; I wish I'd had the sense to see things how I see them now. But I wouldn't have come to see them as I do now if I hadn't of first experienced that. Wishing to skip the experience, or wondering what might have happened if I have, is an exercise in futility. Far better to learn from that experience and ensure that you don't acquire any similar memories from future events. Use it as an object lesson of what you shouldn't do, and make sure you don't do it again.

When dealing with memories of bad times in my life, I ultimately boil it down to one thing: I survived it. They're a reminder to me now that, no matter how bad life gets, I've been through worse...or at least I think I have. Which is all that matters. If I've been through worse, at a point in my life where I wasn't as self-aware (I hate to say "mature" because I really don't consider myself to be particularly mature) and lived through it, then why should I have any difficulties with what I'm currently facing? It's not a trial; it's an inconvenience.

In short, I suppose I use my negative memories as positive reinforcement because, now that I am self-aware, I realize just how damned easy I had it back then and that life isn't going to get any easier. I wasted all that time worrying about stuff that ultimately doesn't matter when I should have been enjoying myself whilst I had the chance.

The past is the past. You can brood over it, you can block it out and lie to yourself about how things happened - which I think everyone does to varying degrees, whether deliberately or otherwise - or you can learn from it. I prefer to learn from. No matter how much I might wish it were otherwise sometimes, I can't change it, except through my perspective. It'd be wonderful if I could do my life over and change things that have led to bad memories, but I can't.

I may or may not have misunderstood the question, in which case I apologize for the mini rant that is probably completely irrelevant. But I don't bury these things; at least not deliberately. I've buried a lot of memories I wish I could remember in detail, because if I could apply my current mindset to them I'd probably be able to handle a lot of things a lot easier, as a lot of my current health problems stem back to my early childhood.

Due to my tendency to focus on the negative, I have very few positive memories. But consider, because of my current perspective, I have very few negative memories either...just experiences I've learned from.

 

[Alexander Nicholi]

I try to remember back to that memory, and I can't. It's like I've walled it up to where I cannot fathom how I felt at all then, even if I wanted to remember and tried my best. All I can remember is the memory of that memory.

It still makes me sad, though.


Overall I don't have a lot of positive or negative memories from my childhood. As a teenager I have a lot of negative memories and one shining positive memory I can't even fucking remember no matter how hard I try u_u