Emotional Memory

*Trigger alert: This post contains racially offensive language.*

Recently I had a very precious moment when how I related to myself no longer made sense. This moment didn't surface from a crisis, like a sudden spring of distress that rushed from underneath some deep, subterranean layers of myself. Rather, it was a quick, simple shift, which occurred like a switch turned on in a dim room. I had seen the collection of my experiences in one way, and now, here, I see them differently. The "this" became "that," with a snap of my fingers, and the most terrifying part is that it maybe the "that" was always so.

Several months ago I re-started therapy as part of my deep healing process. I originally began talk-therapy during college, once I had left home, but let it go as I discovered a "Sisters of the Yam" support group and meditation "spiritual community of friends" after graduation. I insisted, when I began to forge this new relationship with my current therapist, that my goal was to remember. I claimed that I couldn't recall significant events in my early life, and the fragments that I was able to unearth were the same traumatic stories that spooled on repeat from my mental library. I asked, "what happened to everything else?" I was certain that the anger that I discovered last year was a mask for a heap of repressed feelings, clawing through my memory cells to escape into reality. My mission was to re-construct my life by infusing it with new meaning. What was I missing?

Last month our time to call back my inner-child had finally arrived. I brought a college scrapbook to session, and prepared to talk about my Life. We began speaking about my family's brief time in Billings, Montana, when I was about four. We left after a year and a half, unwilling to tolerate the racially hostile town longer than necessary. I related how my parents advocated for me when another little girl of color called me a "nigger," when explaining why she refused to sit next to me during story-time, and how my parents became a kind of peace activists in their own struggle against racism for our family, and the few other families of color that resided there in the late 80s. I conveyed these memories with a passionate pride that I usually reserve for topics other than my childhood.

As the hour went on I had traced through grade school my mother's fierce support as I wrangled against racial stereotypes, chauvinistic boys, and other mistreatment levied on young, queer girls of color, which validated my intuitive sense of fairness. I remembered my father's commitment to public service, embodied by over thirty years in the federal government, and love of history, which imbued my sense of collective responsibility and the intellectual necessity for context. Most powerfully, as I conveyed much of my early life, I shared how both of my parents, unlike so many, offered me freedom to define myself and my world. I was told "yes" most of the time, and was better off for it.

At the end, my therapist made three observations. The first was that I shared happier memories--ones that made me sit-up and smile as I remembered them, and from which revealed seeds of myself that I like the most. Happy memories were a balance to the difficult times about which I relived during past sessions. Nodding. The second observation was that I actually remembered a lot. I had, in fact, shared a number of specific events, despite my claim that I had spanning gaps in my memory. Interesting. The last observation was that although I didn't remember many details about what happened to me--I mostly remembered how I'd felt at the time. Whoa. 

Within an instant, I was a repressed, intellectual who put in years of work to harvest my emotions into a revealed, feeler-of-a-person who had always had a strong, emotional antenna, but simply didn't know it. Such things beg the near-overwhelming, existential question: Who is this person?

I'm sure that there is a lot more to dissect from our little exercise, which I have not even begun to truly understand. I can say, however, that it was a great lesson about the ways in which how I relate to myself really creates my past, present, and future. It reminds me that I must be less of a finite being with history--a story filled with static paragraphs and punctuation--and more like a continuation of selves shaped by quirky moments--a living musical score with a vast divine orchestra playing "I" and "me."

It's sobering reality to sit in, for now.