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Saturday, May 13, 2006 - (see all news for this day)
selective memory - 08:46 AM
(filed under 'general')
i'm reading a book, "where did it all go right?" by andrew collins, about growing up normal in the 70s. it's based on his memories & diaries from when he was a kid. not riveting, & i'm having mild trouble continuing with it actually, but it is mostly interesting.
it's making me think of when we had to get rid of almost every single thing we owned before coming to bahrain, part of which was going through all my old boxes of letters from friends from years & years ago, through to more recent letters.
some rambling thoughts on who i am continue from here, so if you're not in the mood, stop now.
there were quite a number of letters from friends in those boxes, some from guys. one of the guys i recall seeing (visiting, going out places with) a few times (i was keen on him for a little while, but it was never fully reciprocated) & the other guy i'm pretty sure i never saw outside of school (he was keen on me & even though he was a nice guy, it was never reciprocated from my end this time). from both of these boys i'd received quite a number of letters.
what really bothers me though, is that i don't remember corresponding with half the people from whom i received letters. some of them i recalled sending & receiving maybe one letter, but most of them (especially the ones from boys) i didn't recall anywhere near, if any, the number of letters which went back & forth. some of them numbered into five or six or more letters from a few guys.
how on earth can i have totally lost these letters from my memory? some of them were quite deep & revealing .. at least from what i read quickly before deciding what i could keep & what had to be thrown away (which was mostly everything 
). it makes me wonder if i'm so shallow that these people & their letters meant so little to me that the memory of them promptly left my head! i can't believe that's true.
after re-reading these letters & discovering how much of my memory is blank, i wonder how much more of my life is totally gone from my head. it really worries me. there could be whole chunks of my life which are just gone. whole people with whom i might have been friends, yet i don't recall having even knowing them. that's really sad & somewhat worrying.
firstly, how rude of me to not remember the impact they must have had on my life .. & secondly, what is wrong with my brain?! does this mean, in the unlikely event that i would one day write my memoirs in a book, that people who knew me might read it & wonder how callous i am to have totally forgotten them?
i always thought that i was nice & a caring person, but maybe i'm just really shallow & a cow & don't know it. seriously. it makes me wonder about who i am.
Don't worry about it. Where I used to work, I had to read and memorize the details of up to 50 orders per day. I would then wipe the slate clean and then get ready to memorize stuff the next day.
these things are not forgotten, just stored away deep. at times something will trigger my memory of something i'd would have thought i'd forgotten. sometimes my mother will mention something about an old house we used to live in and then memories of that time will pour out. you're not shallow, your deep. meaning that you have experienced so much your "brainiac" filing system is extensive.
I'm hoping you remember me. I've been slack at checking your blog so this is more of a "hello, I'm thinking about you" message. I miss catching up on MSN with you.
sigh ...yes alcohol apparently destroys the brain cells causing memory loss .. damn why did i have to break that bourbon drinking record back in 75 ... now .who are you again ???
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