Having a good memory can be a double-edged sword. It means studying for tests never poses a significant problem. It means that if I see a tidbit of info and commit to remembering it, I will. But memory is indiscriminate in which tidbits it commits.
Not everything is what I want to remember.
I was born on a Monday. I didn’t figure out that my birthday was a Monday until 20 years and two Thursdays had passed. By then it didn’t matter, as the week had already jumped to Friday.
That isn’t to say that all memories are bad. Memories themselves are neither good nor bad – they have none of the moral ambiguity attached to them that is implied in their connotation. They are remembered images, sounds, segments of events. They themselves are not living. They will not change on their own.
However, combined into a memory’s visuals and audio are emotions. This is inescapable, as even the most objective and supposedly emotionless sociopath among us will have feelings attached to their emotions. It may not be ones we understand, but they will still be sensations nevertheless.
“Tell me how you feel,” says the therapist. Recommend by the school for help with adjustment disorders. I don’t have an adjustment disorder. She has black hair that sparkles in the rainy reflection from the window. It is the only detail I remember, and that silence occupied each hour.
I remain silent. Feelings don’t need words to speak.
The problem with emotions in memories is that they affect how we perceive the memory. An event (a picnic, for example) could have every stereotypical marker of perfect happiness, and yet it would not be remembered that way if the person was anxious the entire time. There would be blue skies, only the right people around, not too loud or too quiet, no work to complete afterward, and the entire scene would still be tinged with the stickiness of pervasive worry.
And that’s in the best-case scenario. What about the worst case ones?
It is 10 p.m. on a Thursday. I am 17.
The little blue capsules had slid easily down my throat. One a day for 30 days, or speed up the process with 30 in one day. They chased white ones I had bought earlier at Walgreens. 75 for $4, a steal really. No liquor this time – it was ineffective with the last set when I had found the DCFS letter in the mailbox. Being kicked and choked were only problems if your parents were poor or on drugs. Mine were neither.
In the whiteness of 1 a.m., thick chalky grey is forced to slowly chase after the errant drugs. It tastes like dirt.
It is 3 a.m. on a Friday. I am 17. I am alone.
For those who have been fortunate enough to never struggle with clinical depression, be thankful that black tar has not coated even the most joyful of memories. In all actuality, depression does not make every memory a sad one. More insidiously, it takes away every emotion and the ability to recognize when they are present. The happiest memories become merely content, and the saddest ones become nothing at all. They become numb, an eternal existence.
Depression isn’t like looking through rose-colored glasses. It’s a common analogy, but it’s wrong. At the end of the day, you can choose to take the glasses off and see the world as it is. Depression is far more than that. Every move you make, step in any direction, you feel the weight of your baggage crushing you. It breaks your shoulders, punches you in the gut, chains ankle weights to your legs. It twirls and twists your thinking, making you see the worst in the thing you encounter most – yourself.
The night becomes your best friend. Not because you actually enjoy the lack of light, but because the darkness obscures things. It allows you to hide. The thick sludge surrounding your soul becomes less noticeable at night, and sometimes you can almost pretend that you’re normal. But you’re not, you know you’re not, and come sunrise you put on your body suit of productivity, functionality, and adequate social skills. The suit feels diseased, but it’s really only you that is ill. Your biggest fear is allowing someone to realize that you exist inside the suit. Then they would see how dirty, how horribly disfigured a human could let themself become, and walk away before they become contaminated too, because who in their right mind would choose…this?
My identity is lost in the shuffle between home and Utah and Texas and Idaho and back to the beginning all over again. Is it stained red from the blood I lost in fistfights with others and knife-fights with myself? Perhaps it is hiding amongst the howl of Hurricane Ike. Or is it choking on the dust in the middle of nowhere with horses and an unstable sense of reality for company? Most likely it is strung out somewhere air-drying in the Grand Canyon while I fly to Idaho. I had certainly soaked it with enough tears to need a vacation, that is, once I learned I could still produce them.
For those who have been lucky enough to never be affected by PTSD, treasure the moments where you see an object that brings up discomfort and aren’t terrified to paralysis of what it represented. Celebrate the times where you can talk about an uncomfortable experience and not feel entirely tainted by the encounter. Give yourself a pat on the back for every moment where exist inside your own body and are in control of your own fears. Praise your deity of choice for feeling comfortable enough in your own skin that you have no need to destroy it in order to feel something, anything at all. Love yourself when it hurts and you understand why.
If anyone has ever had to deal with both, then you understand. And I’m sorry you do.
Thesis: People are bastards.
Revised thesis: People aren’t all that bad if you give them a chance.
Final thesis: Silence is a true story that no one wants to hear because it hurts.
As someone who has struggled with both for nearly a decade and beaten one, I wish I had a good cure to offer. I wish I could give those still stuck in the tumultuous cycles of comorbidity a way out, a shoulder to help carry the burden. But I can’t. One of the hardest things to grasp about PTSD is that once it appears, you’re stuck with it for life. Relief from the onslaught of triggered memories comes only from learning to manage it. I will never react in the manner that I used to before its manifestation. I no longer have access to those same thought patterns, and memory is the direct cause. My memories have changed, and now I only have memories of those memories. They have been warped where I no longer have access to the emotions associated with those memories. I remember who moved where, the time, and what I was wearing, but not how I felt. This, not fear, is the true legacy that PTSD leaves behind. No matter the manner a well-meaning grandparent will exude, memories are not permanent. Like all liquids, they are affected by the containers in which they sit. And damn is mental illness a screwed-up container.
Ordinary People After All 