Memories

As we get older it seems our memories become dimmer and dimmer. Sometimes we are able to take them out of where we have them packed, deep in those dark corners of our brains, blow the dust off and look at them. But like old pictures, those old memories tend to fade and crack with time and are not the same as we thought they were.

I've had the chance, recently, to reacquiant myself with some really, really old friends from high school. Some of those friends from high school I also went to grade school with. Some of the people I forgot about, some I remember very well and have missed in my life.

A long time ago I learned to just close my mind to the memories of people and events that were important to me. I had to do that just to survive because I wasn't really allowed to have those things in my life. It was expected that I just exist, pretty much, from day to day and my only life would be what was right there in front of me. It was painful, but I learned to lock away my past and my memories, the good and the bad.

That was not a healthy thing to do. Eventually locking everything away comes back to kick you in the butt.

I felt, for a long time, that I had no past before 1980 because I was not able to have a past. My life before then was nonexistent. Some of my past and my memories were locked up tight because they were and still are very painful memories. I did not remember them until I pulled out my old journals from way back then and reread them. Those memories came flooding back over me in waves and I cried. Some came back to me through pictures and old some came back via old, dear friends that I have missed horribly.

The thing is, all these years, I have had no connection with my past, no direct line of anyone or anything that connected me with who I was then, who I am now and who I will be someday. Most people I know have friends and family they have known their whole lives. I have not had that. Most people I know at least live somewhere close to where they grew up. I've been a gypsy my whole life, wandering from place to place.

Memories -- some sweet and to be savored (thank you, Darrell), some harsh and painful, and some that are just fun when I was just me hanging out with the girls (thank you, Gloria and Lisa and Rhonda). They are a part of me. I don't want to bury them anymore. I need to be able to love and to live again and now, maybe I can.

Peace,
Amy