It’s funny how much we can forget, isn’t it?
I never really think about how much I’ve forgotten until I try to remember something I thought I would never forget and guess what? I forgot. I can sometimes remember the general feelings or some details of certain things but other memories are completely gone.
I know trauma has damaged my brain. Some memories intensified, some vanished, and others jumbled. The thing that helps me remember the most are my journals. I forgot (see how easy it is) how important journalling was to me until I was talking with my sister. She was telling me about how she was reading through her old journals. There were memories in there that she didn’t even remember. Funny ones too. She’s glad and I’m glad she wrote them down.
Prior to that conversation, my dad had also been reading through his old journals and he sent me a few things about me from my childhood. That was fun to read. One of them was about my baptism when I was 13.
Because I see an importance in remembering things, but sometimes my memory fails me, I feel panicked to remember everything. Overwhelming, crazy, unnecessary panic. #lifewithanxiety I want to remember exactly how I feel at this moment. What is going through my head? What I am planning on? What I am struggling with? The ins and outs of what I am going through. And yet I am also so tired (too often) that I just don’t feel like journaling.
I know that I’ve felt this internal battle of wanting to record everything and being too freaking tired because well, I’ve read myself write about this in my journals more than once. Right now journaling for me is sporadic at best. Sometimes it is only one line but that’s better than nothing. I want to get back to a daily habit of it.
I’m thankful for what I have written down and I think I need to be kinder to myself and realize I am doing what I can. Some seasons of life I am not able to journal as much and that is okay. I can’t be perfect.
The biggest reason I could write my memoir was because I journalled. I wrote so much down that some of the writing was easy. Other parts not so much, but when I journaled I wrote down a lot of detail and that helped tremendously. If you would like to write a memoir my unsolicited advice to you is journal, journal, journal. Then you will have that material later to look back on. You will have some big memories that stay with you, but a lot of the little ones, nuanced ones, I guarantee you that you’ll forget them.
I’m thinking about memory again because I’m working on a second memoir. Sometimes I consider waiting and then I think, no I should do this now because memories evolve — things that are important now, won’t be later and vice versa — and it will be a different book if I write it later. All of this to say that I feel an intense need to journal a lot more than I am currently to preserve the memories of how I am holding the stories inside me right now. Not how I will hold them later, but in this moment.
I’ve also written down a lot of my prayers and it is cool to see when those have been answered. I want to remember those prayers. I also want to remember the wonderful moments too. I’m going to try for the next week to daily journal for at least 15 minutes. Then remind myself that I don’t have to remember everything, whatever I can do, that’s good enough. Stressing myself out won’t add to the experience.
How do you preserve memories?
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