Do you remember who you were at 3 years old, what you were doing? I do.
Do you remember the books you read or the things you did when you were 6? I do.
Do you know when you first felt lust? I do, and it was in 1st grade.
I remember. I remember. I remember.
It is what I do. When I talk about vignettes playing out in my head from the frozen river of the past. That’s some decent imagery but it is also the plain truth.
I don’t get to forget. The best I can hope for is to compartmentalize the memory and convince myself that its forgotten. I write because I must. Because doing so relieves some of the stress. I wrote all through high school. Then I stopped. I stopped for 13 years. so what did I do to relieve stress? I fell back on another coping mechanism. hedonism.
Pure physical gratification. Drink, music, sex, food, psychedelics. Anything, everything to deal with pain. My Sara saved me by teaching me to harness those impulses, to rein them in. To master myself through mastering others. Then I lost her. And the barren earth desolation of that loss is still with me. I’m choked up just writing this as memories pour out of the open doors.
Do I occasionally still retreat to that place where only physical lust will satisfy that need? Yes. Do I indulge in it? I don’t. It is the most self destructive thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve done a fairly large number of things I’ll likely never speak of. I can harness those experiences. I write about those experiences and it can seem like I’m engaging in those activities. I’m not.
I wrote 3 pieces today in addition to this one and in one I state I only move forward. It’s true. The past informs the future. It does not control it. I control me and I choose to become more than I was. Always forward. Understanding and accepting the past is a necessity, especially for someone who doesn’t get the gift of forgetting. But allowing that past to be the only thing you will ever be is not acceptable.
I was recently wondering about my personality type; INTJ if your interested. I was sort of obsessing about it. There are incongruities with the type and how I handle the world and I realize now it’s because I remember. Because I have been working on who I am and what I want and how those things are expressed actively for years. Since I was in grade school and decided I would always listen to new music. Because I saw my parents get stuck in the music of their youth and I saw that as stagnation. Always forward even then.
Pelgris 