Posted by jane d on November 28, 2003, at 17:13:35
In reply to Memory, posted by Dinah on November 26, 2003, at 15:44:40
Dinah,
I can't help but weigh in with a different interpretation (big surprise there). Perhaps you don't remember which parent it was because it wasn't important at the time. Having either parent say something like that would be shocking. When I try to visualize myself in your place sitting there with a knife in my hand I remember that awful combination of suicidal feelings, rage against my parents and desperation that they wouldn't leave me alone, and horror at myself and I think that I would have been almost exclusively focused on the knife and my feelings would have drowned out everything going on around me. Details such as who said what or who handed me the knife might well not even have registered on me in the first place once I reached a certain level of hysteria. In fact there are many details of fights with my family that I don't remember exactly from that period of my life. What I mainly remember is my frantic feelings.Wow. Writing that reminds me that life really does get better. I had forgotten that awful feeling of not understanding what was happening to me, parents hovering by worriedly demanding an explanation for what was wrong, and making it all worse.
But back to the abstract - I think photographs with fuzzy spots does describe how memories work. With the fuzzy spots being things you didn't remember to begin with, or that were too similar to other events so that you stop being sure what happened when, or perhaps even being related to the medication/age related black holes that all my vocabulary seems to be sinking into.
Jane
poster:jane d
thread:284170
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20031123/msgs/284824.html