Remembering the Good Stuff
I have a problem with memory. I can’t remember the bad stuff and I can’t remember the good stuff. Of course, that’s an oversimplification because my body remembers everything. It’s my prefrontal cortex that has trouble retaining the detail of events in my life.
My little polaroid memories.
This is true for me today but it was most evident over a ten year period thirty or more years ago. Everything — except what I needed to function in my employment — went in and out of my mind like a wisp in the wind. My father, who was not my favorite person in the world, used to say I had a memory like a sieve.
Cultivating Good Memories
So when my decompensation landed me in the hospital in 1991, I left committed to turning my life around (mind you, that didn’t happen for another decade or two). In spite of identity confusion, constant pain, obstreperous alters (whom I now love), fear, doom, and other normal stuff for we multiples, I decided to have fun, to try to do some happy things, to find the goodness in the midst of misery. The only problem was that, even after I’d experienced a bit of light, I’d forget it. The constant chaos prevented me from incorporating a good memory into all the bad.
Documenting Good Memories
I was poor as a church mouse back then but I decided to save what little I had to buy a polaroid camera (it seemed like such an extravagance but maybe I was worth it). For those of you who are too young to know what a polaroid camera is: it developed the pictures on the spot (not particularly high quality) and — even better — it left a large white space on the bottom where you could write something about the picture.
I began to document my good times with polaroid pictures which I kept in many small one-picture-per-page albums. This ritual was life saving. Yes, I really did have moments of happiness in the midst of all the pain. Yes, I had a life beyond the four walls of the therapy room. No, I wasn’t totally worthless and without friends. Even though my largest memories of that period are mired in grief and isolation, I found a way to eke out a life in the midst of death.
Remembering the Good Times
I pull out those little albums often to remind me of my life back then. It gives me pleasure to see myself straining to find a spot of joy growing through what felt like muck and mud. I can track my trajectory through those pictures. Although I can’t remember the details, I can remember the feelings. I can see how the me of multiple selves back then grew into the me who is mostly integrated today.
Polaroid cameras are now antiques and you can’t get the film anymore, so I’m more likely to track my life through Facebook posts online.
But that just doesn’t match my little albums that house the instant pictures with notations at the bottom. They were my lifeline during a time when I couldn’t remember anything.
🕊️
Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.
~ Oscar Wilde