Not Everyone Likes Memories

More than one person has written to me recently regarding the past, both of them from years in the past. I don't begrudge them thier happy recollections of things, as they seem to remember the happy more than the bad, which I can't differtiate from and therefore keep trying to blot out. My operating system doesn't allow for selective memory retention. If I need to forget 1987 because the circumstances of both my arrival and departure in that year are not what I wish to remember anymore, I don't get to keep the laughs, the kisses, the good times. All needs to be deleted.

Same applies to old friends. I know people have a tendenancy to blot out the bad things they did in childhood (and teenagedom and young adulthood, etc.) so they are able to just keep the good times. I even understand the mechanism. I just don't posessess it.

For example, if I want to remember that my friends and I used to go to block parties, get drunk and screw around with the hoodie girls then I have to remember that we also lived in a fucking slum, that we screwed each other over at every opportunity and only really had friendship because of who we were and where we were at. There was no real love between us, otherwise why would we steal from one another? And some things just can't be forgiven, regardless of how you rationalize them. My "friends" breaking into my apartment & taking everything they could lay thier hands on being one of them. And my retaliation was no better.

See, these things I remember. These things stay with me when others try to drudge up the past, make it into a nice little clip reel that's viewable by all ages. We sucked as people, and we damn well knew it then. I experience guilt, shame, anger and remorse about the past when I think of it. Because the happy times were too few and too fleeting. Life, on a day-to-day basis, sucked. How can I remember a good movie I watched if I have to recall that I lived on the streets at the time I watched? How can I remember the fun lunches and great business trips at a good job when I recall so vividly the backstabbing, the charges of corruption, the inevitable breakup of the original team of people? I can't. I'm not wired that way. Blame it on modern pediatric psychotropic pharmacology (PPP; ha!), because I can't think of any other reason why I can't differentiate between a good memory and a bad one.

Some of us forget. Some of us don't. And some of us have to throw out the good with the bad.

Oddly enough, the Mrs. is a lot like me in that respect. Cannot forgive what she cannot forget. I can only be grateful that I know for a fact that she has less to forget than I do. That and pray and work to make sure Bubba is not succeptible to the same crap. Because it is crap. It's no fun not being able to be selective in what you choose to remember. Others get to do it; why not me? Boo-hoo-hoo. Like the sailor of modern fiction said, "I yam what I yam".

On a final note this morning, which I'm up to type at because I went to sleep too early, I will speak of expectations. After I smoke a cigarette.

[short break]

Okay, expectations. For example, I've just gotten a soda with caffine out of the fridge. Caffine should wake me up more, right? That's what you'd expect. However, what it will do instead is allow me to go back to sleep when I'm done with it. Not exacly what the drink was designed to do, but I've learned that you can't expect things to work the same for everybody.

A good chunk of my life was wasted 'expecting' for things to go a certain way, to have certain things out of life. I know I'm not the only one. Some long for the 'whirlwind' of passion, expect it in thier personal relationships. I wished for that too, as far back as my first crush. It never lasted, though. I suppose it's unrealistic to expect your 1,000th kiss to match your first in intensity, your latest job to be as fufilling as the one you remember best, the posessions you have now to be as valued as the ones from your childhood. But we still expect it. I don't know why. I can't find a way to rationalize it or correct it.

So, in the case of expectations, I've had to learn to enjoy contentment when intensity finally loses its grip. Yes, things were once more enjoyable than they are now. But it doesn't seem to last.

Except for one; my love for Bubba. I can look at him and feel good all day, even when he's acting up. He is a handfull. Some days I want to give up. But then he laughs or smiles or says something and I want to hug him and tell him I love him. Because I do. My memories of him are still with me, from Day One. This makes me luckier than some, I guess; to have someone in my life I can always feel strongly about. I suppose it comes from him being half me, maybe the half that will get it right. I will try to help him along that path. And my expectations will be great. But I can accept disappointments, at least in regards to him, because I will always feel strongly about him.