“Therein lies the problem with a binary world, whose dichotomous true or false is obscured within the dark shadows between. “
Prologue:
Our memories are indexed by the emotional tags attached to our experiences, transforming the virtual kitchen junk drawer of prior life into an efficient searchable database of context, made available to augment content missing from the raw data of events happening in the moment. When a combination of context and raw data (anything received through sensory input) reaches a critical emotional threshold of intensity, the amygdala declares an emergency, mobilizing all available mental resources to determine one binary course of action: fight or flight. The emergency is meant to distract, like the soothing sound of that frenemy alarm clock we love to hate each morning. But imminence takes our eye off the ball of everyday life, leaving a negative emotional impression in its wake.
Memories
It seemed an impossible task; the resurrection of an entire lifetime of memories, understanding the payoff for remembering would be more trauma. Driven to distraction by a tormentingly painful recovery, there would be no rainier day to begin such a task. So began the mystery of decoding a miracle I had not originally wanted any part of. The forty-two days of gap between illness and partial recovery was one thing. But uncovering the mystery of traumas past set the stage for the anatomy of a disaster.
Memories lost to crowding often return, once the less important fade. But the repressed are more complicated. As a child, my parents’ divorce vanished portions of an entire year, events that were too painful to immediately process. Kept within the gatekeeper’s abyss of repression, they were returned to me at a time when I was better able to deal with them.
Repressed memories are like all others, when triggered, they behave as if they have always been there. Sometimes jarred-loose, their validity is never questioned by the person who is recalling them. Like a partially folded page of writing, the information is there but you can only access what you can see. It is not until the page is unfolded that the entire memory “unfolds”.
“Fearing the judgement of others, I would avoid difficult decisions by leaving my life to those who knew more than I did about myself and what I wanted—sometimes perfect strangers.”
One could compare recalling repressed memories to receiving an email. The view from your inbox provides context to what an email is about because you can see the sender and the subject. In much the same way, once ready to be accessed, your mind perceives what a repressed memory is going to be about, because of the context in which it was remembered and its similarity to memories that you have already recalled. Sometimes memories are triggered, pouring out uncontrollably. Most of the time, you can choose whether or not to experience them, like clicking on the email to reveal its contents.
Later! I am busy…
Fearing the judgement of others, I would avoid difficult decisions by leaving my life to those who knew more than I did about myself and what I wanted—sometimes perfect strangers. One might consider a reluctance to make decisions the perfect opportunity to follow God. I hadn’t consulted him either. Instead, I sold my future to the highest bidder, anyone possessing more guts than me. Hence, my perpetual reluctance to engage in anything.
My avoidance was a compulsive response at the layers, to a question of value at the core—a value well-established. But left to loom large, was the shadow of doubt cast by those with access to the core. Gaslighting the gatekeeper with odd shades of truth, left to reign a fight-or-flight fear of a monster lurking inside the closet. But the mind recalls an embrace of the Trojan horse teddy bear, a frenemy whose imperfections added depth to a void only partially filled. Therein lies the problem with a binary world, whose dichotomous true or false is obscured within the dark shadows between.
“It’s the catch-22 we face every day, abandoning our long-term pursuits in favor of short-term survival…”
The otherwise useful energy utilized to fight the battles of others, left tattered my protective layers, neglecting the advancement of the core in favor of imminence created by those I trusted. Understanding wins half the battle, like mobilizing redirected energy at the layers maybe solves half of the problem. Priority-one is self preservation, at least it should be. But it is the core where healing must begin, not the layers. Only from a grounded stance of reasonableness can we reach for higher functions in life.
My recovery’s perpetual sidekick of a chemically induced fight-or-flight—frequent battles fought within the layers—inhibited healing at the core, leaving their messy wake in place of badly needed life context, crowding past memories in the pursuit of self preservation. It’s the catch-22 we face every day, abandoning our long-term pursuits in favor of short-term survival; so my conundrum was nothing new; the emergency of the day is what we deal with first. But the war between current and old context takes its toll, requiring selective reflection to again achieve a grounded stance—soon interrupted by another emergency.
So perhaps it is true, the augmented reality of explosive media dialogue affects more than we understand in the moment as lasting impressions from frightening portraits painted, leave imprinted atop our current context a message of conjured imminence, the creation of a micro fight-or-flight. It becomes one more thing on our plate, whose message takes precedence over the task of healing our core.