Hi! Remember me? I am your long-term-memory!
I have brought with me two other parts of your life, your body memory combined with the reflection of your amygdala and the emotional side of your brain.
We have come to visit you once again. As before, we would like to show you pictures from the past to remind you of something wonderful, and what you have endured. We would like to guide you back to a time you have forgotten, the time you were born as a remarkable, innocent, perfect little human. We would like for you to remember yourself there. If you will allow me, I will open the door for you to feel and meet your lost soul again.
I know you still suffer from mental, emotional, physical, sexual and social abuse. You are still restless and say you can never relax. Your fear is dictating everything you do: the results you live with now.
When will you stop avoiding me and denying that I exist? I know you do not like to feel nervous and anxious. You do not like to live agitated, anxious and irritable, confused and depressed. So why don’t you embrace me as a part of you rather than hate everything and everybody, especially yourself.
May I remind you it was they who neglected your fundamental needs and pushed you instead to become a ‘productive’ member of a society, just as repressed and damaged as you are. I know they have bruised your body, injured your spirit, manipulated your mind and disrespected your soul, tried to take away your integrity and shamed you. It was they who did it, so why do you feel guilty and ashamed for what they have done to you. It was them who inflicted the pain a long time ago, when you were a child. It was not your fault.
I’m sorry to say that you’ll never be able to let go of the pain if you keep suppressing me. Sometimes you can’t repress, and what I am hosting is your first thought when you wake up or, the last before you go to sleep. Or, I remind you with a nightmare that I am overloaded with grinding feelings that would like to come out. Other times I gave you signs and warnings; the times your body became ill, your mind confused and you were filled with paralyzing fear. Can’t you see all the damage that has happened to you?
Naturally, after years of accumulating many types of pain you got angry with everyone, even yourself. At last you blamed bad luck, or the whole world for what you feel, just because you tried to avoid me, your long-term-memory.
Let’s try a life in logic, you said. You became educated, a hard working person, a member of society and established a name. You did it in the hope for a better life and blindly accepted the unreal. Unreal things and people don’t give a damn about your splitting pain. You could not see how many of them are fleeing from themselves, into a world of fakes, just like you. In your self-deception and false hope you do not see the reality of how some broke all rules of decent humanity, abusing others the same way you were abused. When something went wrong, of course you blamed circumstances and facts. All efforts to fix the broken pot didn’t work – the most important pieces were missing.
I gently remind you that this is called denial. The same denial you needed as a child to live with the seemingly never ending mental and physical pain that impacted you every day. It is the same denial that once saved your life, and is now controlling you, keeps you in the cage of your pain.
Now, in your fear you project. You see in every man an abusive father, every woman is a neglectful mother, and friends look like molesters. You freeze when a person touches you and retrieve into another personality, into the one you know, the one who endured the sexual abuse to keep you sane. Now living again with fears you know from early childhood, unable to feel alive, you reach for repressors and catharsis.
It doesn’t matter if you drown me in alcohol or try to cloud me with drugs, – I am alive. Living in your dreams, your fear, shame and pain make you paranoid for no obvious reason and influence your reactions.
Again you feel the helplessness you knew since childhood and you reached out. They came and promised salvation, help and healing if you provided just one more time what they need – money.
Have you ever thought about why you feel angry and hateful toward the world for the way it is and the way you are?
Yes, I remember, you even feel remorseful about what you did while repeating what you have learned from early childhood on. Don’t go on inflicting the same pain in others.
Why don’t you stop carrying around the garbage others have forced on you? Please feel sorry for yourself, cry the tears you have suppressed for many years. Please don’t continue this short life on earth without knowing who you really are. Allow me to come back so I can show you which part of you needs healing.
May I whisper again, – look deep inside! In your brain, ask your amygdala to hold up a mirror, because deep inside I´m holding all the wisdom you need to heal so you can become who you really are, a wonderful human being.
Sincerely,
Your long-term-memory
I wrote “Remember Me” after “Triggered Ear Infection” when I came back from Germany in 2002.
Physically ill, memories appeared that I have suppressed for many years, out of fear of losing a hope I hung on to as if it were my life safety rope.
It was now time to face the reality. In the midst of a painful inner ear infection, I was triggered by the stinging pain and regressed off and on for a week.
A week later the pain of the infection subsided and the mental and physical pain from the past and present were connected.