Memory
I have very few memories of my childhood.
I cherish the ones I can, the ones where I am growing up happy and safe with my parents and Nana, surrounded by love. But there are also the ones I don’t want to remember, the ones where I am plagued by obsessions and not truly living life.
While writing this blog, I reach out to family to see if I can get any guidance on things I don’t remember, both the good and the bad. It’s important to see the whole picture, yet - as my psychiatrist told me - my brain decided to shelter me from the more painful memories.
It sheltered me from the specifics of the bullying I endured every day before I learned how to act “normal,” before I had good friends who thought of my abnormalities as “quirks” rather than anything to shun me for. I spent so long trying to be someone I wasn’t at the time, and not enough time figuring out how to make happiness in the moment that would stay.
I’ve always lived for the future. As an impatient person, I’m often looking forward to so many things that it’s hard for me to be in the moment. I hardly know how to, in fact, and when I try mindfulness, I lose patience quickly. When I’m waiting for something, I want the days to go by as quickly as possible, and it was like that when I was a child as well, so tormented by obsessive thoughts that I couldn’t let myself sit and linger on a moment that would turn painful.
Now that I’m older, I regret this mindset of my youth even as I find myself engaging in it now. It’s strange to have to learn about my own childhood from spreadsheets and stories, photo albums where I smile in pictures without remembering them. It’s weird to not be able to think of things for myself and have to ask, then get into awkward conversations about important things I should remember but don’t.
Today, I did an interview with Mom about my past. I knew the answers to some of the questions from similar conversations we’ve had, but I am also aware that many of these memories are likely not true from my own perspective. I likely experienced these moments differently - instead of as an adult watching me get bullied and teased, I was getting bullied and teased. Instead of hearing reports from the guidance counselor whose hobby seemed to be following me around at all times, I was watching her follow me around corners and write things down and I never knew what she was going to say.
It’s disconcerting, to say the least, that other people have more of a solid hold on my past than I do. My spreadsheet from Dad that he wrote about my childhood about is a good resource, but oftentimes it feels like I’m reading a story about someone else’s life instead of my own. I sometimes feel small ties to the past, bits and pieces that made it past my brain’s restriction, but sometimes I wish for more.
I wonder if what I experienced was really that terrible that it needed to be blocked off. I wonder if I would be a different person if I could remember everything, all the pain and all the good things that happened to me over the years. It’s especially strange considering that, even though I love writing characters with deep ties to their past and their people’s past, I have such a small connection to my own.
Small memories burst through the cracks of the fortress my brain has built around these memories, snaking through like flowers growing through the sidewalk. I remember some silly things, funny moments, books I read, and people I knew. But at the same time, it feels like trying to put together the puzzle of my life with so many of the pieces missing.
Whenever I’ve based a blog entry on a memory, I know that there must be dozens of other examples I could have used. What made this particular one stick out to me and stay in my mind after the others left?
I sometimes speculate that I remember things more easily when I wasn’t having bad days with my OCD. When I’m having bad days, they blur together until I can barely tell the days apart, my focus so heavy on what’s inside my mind that I can barely focus on what’s outside.
I don’t like to think that my childhood had more days like that than days without obsessive thoughts taking over most of the day. At the same time, however, the fact that I don’t remember much combined with the fact that what I do remember is tinged with OCD in the background makes me think that this is how I must have grown up.
I find this terribly sad. I grew up with a kind, loving family who did the best they could with me, but their love couldn’t make me have a normal childhood. We went on family vacations where all I remember is getting sick or being afraid of getting sick. We read books together, sang songs, watched movies, went to plays. We did everything I imagine in a loving and happy childhood, but so much of it is tainted that it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
I suppose the only way to go forward from here is to do what I’ve done all this time - live for the future - but also try to focus on enjoying the present, making the most out of everything I do so that I have memories to draw from in the future. When I have children one day, I might not be able to tell them what I was like at their age, but I hope I will be able to learn from the lessons of my past - even if they come from others - and build a future I can be proud of.
Ellie, a writer new to the Chicago area, was diagnosed with OCD at age 3. She hopes to educate others about her condition and end the stigma against mental illness.