Inside the Memory Box

Here's one story about yesterday:

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/Hundreds+rally+better+mental+health+services/5384402/story.html

On September 10, in Victoria BC, about 300 people gathered in honour of Word Wide Suicide Prevention Day. The image you see here is our Memory Box, in which the intrepid Tara Timmers carried our hopes all the way from our adult psychiatric hospital to the lawns of the Legislature. Once there, many wrote messages, or names and other memories on scraps of paper, there was even a small photograph dropped into the box. I've read every one and was moved to tears many, many times. These scraps of memory will go to Ottawa in the envelope containing our petitions and letters. 

I've been working hard since then to make myself remember yesterday. I noticed about 4 or 5 hours after I got home the entire day (as is usual since I hit my head 6 years ago), had begun to disappear. In the same way a vivid dream that I think I couldn't possibly forget does after I wake up. I began to get those feelings of self-recrimination, fear, anxiety, depression replace the joy I could now only dimly sense had been there. It just wasn't fair! I really wanted to remember this day of all days and was annoyed at that part of me that had kicked in, seeming to want to punish me for feeling happiness.

It occurred to me I might have a chance to fix this if the memory issue is a chronic anti-stress response. That maybe I could train myself to remember. I spent most of the evening "walking" mentally through the day, from start to finish. I noticed there were vignette moments that had stuck, so I made myself logically go thru the missing sections with prompts from long term memory. Like picturing a particular street corner I am familiar with. 

It worked, sort of. I was able to bring back a lot of it. It's still got that TV effect but the images are there. And I am so thankful today for Daphne's, Hugh's and Erika's photographs to fill in the rest. The best part has been some of the good feelings I had in those moments came back, again, dimly and movie-like, kind of once removed but there. 

I tried a tactic I heard about from people who treat people like me with dissociative identities, or what I refer to in myself as my splinters. I had a long talk with that part of myself I theorized might be masking all the memories in order to safely block any dangerous ones. I used a commanding but motherly tone, speaking out loud about how it is okay to trust myself to deal with feelings, that an adult is in charge now. That the child in me could finally let go of her vigilance. This exhausted childhood part of me is where I think the more persistent post traumatic stress symptoms come from. 

I never had a functioning adult in my life as a child and only came into an understanding of what it means to be an adult once I got my addictions under control after the accident. Feelings are not something I access anymore for evaluating a given situation.

From some reason yesterdays exposure to all those people cut through to some deep wounding inside me. I felt completely at home with everyone there, it felt natural as breathing to speak to them and to have them speak to me. Not an ounce of agoraphobic reactions after a bit of nausea at the very beginning. 

The best part of the exercise in remembering was when the memories of watching the women speak came flooding back. I can "see" their hand gripping the microphone, "hear" their voices shake with emotion, I can "feel" their passion. Watching them as mentors: Denise Savoie , Hazel Meredith and Erika Rolston and reliving the experience of watching them will make my job easier to do now because remembering is learning.