September 12, 2024
Memory
Woe be on you, this time the blog is about plural things and was written in a partial haze by at least two of us. Except this paragraph which is me. -Love, Trinket
Memory has been on my mind. Specifically, how little of it I have from the past. I have on occasions been amazed by other people remembering specific details of things from their childhood. Or just like, what cartoons were like. That said, I remember little things here and there, and all of them are bad things. Not on the level of hugely traumatic. More like, small embarrassments. Some of the memories are good, and many are neutral, but they only exist in little bits and pieces. I couldn't give you a complete narrative.
Forgetting is only natural, of course. Nobody remembers every little thing. Only, I feel like mine was better at one point. I think that if I had to study for a test or something, I could still do that just the same, but recalling events which occurred to me is much trickier. I wouldn't be surprised if each alter has some slightly different memories, and if we could put them together we might have something. Maybe not, though. I don't expect every single thing is still rattling around, even between us. I think most of it is lost.
None of these memories seem to be especially important. The reason why I care so much is that I-- we-- feel separated from that person who existed in the past. We think that there was an original host to this body, but it's not any of us who exist currently. That person is a part of us, physically and emotionally, in the same way that our great great grandparents are: they had to exist, but our view of them is purely abstract. We never "met."
They were a lonely person. Maybe lonely enough to break apart? Does that mean they're dead? That's a matter of opinion, and we don't have any set opinion on it. But we know that they thought a lot about living differently. About being something else, anything that wasn't human. They wanted to be close to someone in a way that was deeper than the friends they had, and deeper than family. They lacked that closeness with anyone in reality. At some point, I guess, they split up and turned into us, and all of those fantasies came true, more or less. They didn't choose us, but they really might have, if they'd known.
A lot of these memories feel bad, but that distance we have now makes it less like regret and more like pity. They had issues being angry a lot of the time with no way to deal with it properly, but they were also a kid. Can't really hold things like that over a child's head. Not that we don't take responsibility for their actions, but it was decades ago.
So it all comes back to things that just apply to everyone, right? The things we do haven't changed, and the way people react to us hasn't changed, either. The only difference is that when I look back at the past self, long gone, it feels like something from the departed. Pictures locked in a dusty box in the attic, providing just a slice of the past. The difference is that they're our memories. We lived them, and we grew directly out of them.
As always, I don't know where I'm going with this, I just circle the drain for a while and shrug. It's kept me awake a few times, though! And it makes me sad and wistful! Maybe we all need philosophical quandaries like that.