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Memory and Martyrdom
Kind of about therapy but really very definitely not about work.
Yesterday morning, I was reading a story in which someone does something heroic and is suffering the consequences, seeing no escape, and a friend tells him not to be a martyr. Since that was about where I stopped reading for the morning, I found myself thinking about it, and admitted wryly to myself - 'wryly,' because the literary critic in me disapproves - that I like martyrs, at least as protagonists in stories, at least some of them.
So then I thought, well, okay, why?
And I thought, because their suffering means something. They suffer, and it's not just random. Also, someone cares, if only the text/reader.
Which brought me straight into my own issues, my own colossal tangle of fear, worry, shame, and hope.
In particular, it brought me back into the feeling I've had intermittently for a couple decades now, which goes sort of like this:
Whether there was more or not, I definitely think my mother is Not Well and not a good person for me to be around, but it feels as though it would make a big difference to know.
(That 'feels as though' is a red flag, by the way.)
At times, I've had an urge to go back into therapy with the express goal of figuring out if there's anything to remember, and if there is, remembering enough of it to make me feel certain one way or another, regardless of what it takes. This is roughly analogous to getting tired of sitting with a string and hook dangling into the water and deciding it's time to fish with a hand-grenade instead. There are problems with that proposal - lots of them. Lots and lots of them. It's sometimes very attractive to me anyway.
One of the big problems with it is that it might be overwhelming and incapacitating (as hand-grenades so often are), and I don't actually have a life that can accommodate incapacitation. (Who does?) But (my wanting brain suggests) maybe it could be sort of like knee replacement surgery: no one wants surgery, and no one wants to be unable to walk without assistance for a significant amount of time afterward, but on the whole, if your knee is bad enough to need replacement, it's best to figure out a time that wouldn't be too bad and just go ahead and do it.
Recovering traumatic memories is probably not much like knee replacement surgery, but in my imagination, sometimes it is.
Other problems include that it might not even be possible, and that it would be hard to find a way to do this without opening up the possibility of being influenced by the expectations of whoever was helping me. Also, it's typically problematic to attempt to prove a negative, so at what point would I be prepared to believe that there wasn't anything there to be found?
(My gut keeps worrying that there's nothing there to be found. It's a worry because so much of my life has been shaped around the idea that there is - but of course it would also be seventy different kinds of relief. It's a worryhope. My more reasonable brain points to the evidence and says, 'Really? How likely do you really think it is that nothing's there?' Then my gut tells my reasonable brain to shut up.)
All of that history of thinking and wanting and doubting and dreading and wishing went through my mind yesterday morning, in a single compressed bullet-point, and I once again felt that urge to try to just push it and stop having to wonder if I have any reason (which in my backbrain is really more like 'right') to identify with suffering protagonists and feel eased by meaning and witnessing. Or to continue to block contact with my mother, or to keep wondering and doubting myself. (And if I don't, then why do I do it? This is the furthest thing from a rhetorical question even though it's not one with an answer.)
There's one more problem, which is what I thought about yesterday morning:
I am dissociative. If I remember something, there is no guarantee at all that I won't just forget again. If I have a full-on flashback filled with really convincing detail which leaves me in no doubt whatsoever? It is 100% possible for me to forget it, or lose the sensation of certainty, or both.
The fact is, this may have already happened. I remember telling my therapist - in a dissociated state, which makes it amazing that I remember it at all - about something unequivocally abusive happening. I don't think I was lying or making it up. And yet, the quality of dissociation - the fact that I don't currently remember what I was apparently remembering then, as well as the not-quite-me feeling the incident has in recollection - means that the knowledge that I said it still doesn't feel like the evidence I'm looking for. I may not think it was a lie or a fiction, but I'm not sure it was true.
Which means that achieving certainty and freeing myself of crippling self-doubts is probably a chimera. The problem is, that doesn't stop me from wanting it. Possibly that's the nature of chimeras.
My mother's 80, and of the querulous nature that often doesn't age well, at least mentally. Sooner or later she's going to die, probably before me. I wonder at times whether, when that happens, I am going to discover a vast, terrible regret that I didn't talk to her at least once or twice before the end. At other times I wonder whether I'm not going to really remember and retain the memory of anything that happened until after she is safely dead and ash. It's a problem.
Yesterday morning, I was reading a story in which someone does something heroic and is suffering the consequences, seeing no escape, and a friend tells him not to be a martyr. Since that was about where I stopped reading for the morning, I found myself thinking about it, and admitted wryly to myself - 'wryly,' because the literary critic in me disapproves - that I like martyrs, at least as protagonists in stories, at least some of them.
So then I thought, well, okay, why?
And I thought, because their suffering means something. They suffer, and it's not just random. Also, someone cares, if only the text/reader.
Which brought me straight into my own issues, my own colossal tangle of fear, worry, shame, and hope.
In particular, it brought me back into the feeling I've had intermittently for a couple decades now, which goes sort of like this:
"Screw 'you'll remember when it's safe to remember.' I'm sick of doubting and undermining myself: if I was abused beyond my mother's creepy lack of boundaries and sexualized over-identification with my body, I want to know that now so that I can stop going back and forth on it, so I can stop questioning what I'm justified in saying to my brother to defend my refusal of contact with my mother for the past 18+ years, and feeling defensive about straining family relationships, so I can take back all the energy that's been going into tying those memories down and have it for myself. And if I wasn't, then I should know that, too, and figure out what the implications are."
Whether there was more or not, I definitely think my mother is Not Well and not a good person for me to be around, but it feels as though it would make a big difference to know.
(That 'feels as though' is a red flag, by the way.)
At times, I've had an urge to go back into therapy with the express goal of figuring out if there's anything to remember, and if there is, remembering enough of it to make me feel certain one way or another, regardless of what it takes. This is roughly analogous to getting tired of sitting with a string and hook dangling into the water and deciding it's time to fish with a hand-grenade instead. There are problems with that proposal - lots of them. Lots and lots of them. It's sometimes very attractive to me anyway.
One of the big problems with it is that it might be overwhelming and incapacitating (as hand-grenades so often are), and I don't actually have a life that can accommodate incapacitation. (Who does?) But (my wanting brain suggests) maybe it could be sort of like knee replacement surgery: no one wants surgery, and no one wants to be unable to walk without assistance for a significant amount of time afterward, but on the whole, if your knee is bad enough to need replacement, it's best to figure out a time that wouldn't be too bad and just go ahead and do it.
Recovering traumatic memories is probably not much like knee replacement surgery, but in my imagination, sometimes it is.
Other problems include that it might not even be possible, and that it would be hard to find a way to do this without opening up the possibility of being influenced by the expectations of whoever was helping me. Also, it's typically problematic to attempt to prove a negative, so at what point would I be prepared to believe that there wasn't anything there to be found?
(My gut keeps worrying that there's nothing there to be found. It's a worry because so much of my life has been shaped around the idea that there is - but of course it would also be seventy different kinds of relief. It's a worryhope. My more reasonable brain points to the evidence and says, 'Really? How likely do you really think it is that nothing's there?' Then my gut tells my reasonable brain to shut up.)
All of that history of thinking and wanting and doubting and dreading and wishing went through my mind yesterday morning, in a single compressed bullet-point, and I once again felt that urge to try to just push it and stop having to wonder if I have any reason (which in my backbrain is really more like 'right') to identify with suffering protagonists and feel eased by meaning and witnessing. Or to continue to block contact with my mother, or to keep wondering and doubting myself. (And if I don't, then why do I do it? This is the furthest thing from a rhetorical question even though it's not one with an answer.)
There's one more problem, which is what I thought about yesterday morning:
I am dissociative. If I remember something, there is no guarantee at all that I won't just forget again. If I have a full-on flashback filled with really convincing detail which leaves me in no doubt whatsoever? It is 100% possible for me to forget it, or lose the sensation of certainty, or both.
The fact is, this may have already happened. I remember telling my therapist - in a dissociated state, which makes it amazing that I remember it at all - about something unequivocally abusive happening. I don't think I was lying or making it up. And yet, the quality of dissociation - the fact that I don't currently remember what I was apparently remembering then, as well as the not-quite-me feeling the incident has in recollection - means that the knowledge that I said it still doesn't feel like the evidence I'm looking for. I may not think it was a lie or a fiction, but I'm not sure it was true.
Which means that achieving certainty and freeing myself of crippling self-doubts is probably a chimera. The problem is, that doesn't stop me from wanting it. Possibly that's the nature of chimeras.
My mother's 80, and of the querulous nature that often doesn't age well, at least mentally. Sooner or later she's going to die, probably before me. I wonder at times whether, when that happens, I am going to discover a vast, terrible regret that I didn't talk to her at least once or twice before the end. At other times I wonder whether I'm not going to really remember and retain the memory of anything that happened until after she is safely dead and ash. It's a problem.