Forgettery

Posted on March 23, 2021 by Apparently Catherine

Last week we seem to of accidentally opened Pandora’s box of mental madness by opening up in therapy a little about one of the childhood trauma things we’ve been avoiding and now it seems I’m struggling to regain control. I keep wandering the house at 3am inundated by all sorts of memories that, like the narrative of nightmares, now escape my consciousness again leaving just an imprint of their unspeakable dread.

The memories are so strong and vivid when inside of them that we can’t believe we were ever able to forget. Just like a recurring dream where suddenly you realise you’ve been there before, you remember where you left off last time and how to get around this nocturnal landscape until you eventually wake and no matter how hard you try to hold on, it falls away like quicksand. Gone, until next time.

My mother said once that my grandmother with Alzheimer’s referred to her mind as a “forgettery”. I immediately imagined this as place where dreams and lost memories wandered in limbo for all eternity, existing but unable to quite reach the surface.

Sometimes my own forgettery accidentally leaves a window cracked open and I find my way inside.

These lost memories swirl around reminding me why we deserve everything we ever got, they justify it so strongly that arguing that we were ‘only a little child’ seems like an utterly ridiculous and irrelevant defence.

They haunt me still now because I get to know and keep the unquestionable fact that we knew better, we were bad. I just can’t seem to hold onto what we knew better about or what we actually did that was so terrible.

My mind, or someone within it, seems to strongly believe that if I had to hold on to this knowledge I’d absolutely kill myself and thus the brains animal instinct to self preserve wins out by simply throwing me into a pit of walled off amnesic confusion.

Impossible memories and their context forever lost within the safety of my forgettery, glimpses so bizarre that in the cold light of day I can only question their reality as I try to deny my own.