My friend came to see me today.
It’s been a while since we’ve chatted so there was lots to talk about.
As always when we get together there is lots of tea and definitely cake.
Cake is always a necessity.
She told me about her kids.
How they’re growing up.
How her eldest is off to uni too.
And her daughter has had struggles with friends on social media.
Both things I can relate to.
I told her about my troubles. My catastrophising. The urges to hurt myself as I don’t know how to deal with the pain I feel inside. How I keep reliving the past because the emotions from past events keep getting triggered.
She’s studying psychology at uni, and damn I’m so proud of her for that. It’s not easy for a mother to return to full time education whilst juggling all that she does. But she’s acing it!
And talking to her helped so much with what she has been learning during her course so far. And interpreting what I have been going through from a clinical perspective.
But the most helpful part for me was clearing up some of the blurred lines.
She told me how people do change their past memories each time they retell it. How people absorb the details when others relive the moment and it amalgamates into your reality.
And I do believe this happens.
There have been times where my memories have adapted. But usually the emotions these events invoke rarely change.
The initial emotions that the event gave you stick with you and become part of that core memory.
I told her how I struggled with family members having different recollections to events. How I almost feel like I have been gaslight about events and am so confused why if my memory is wrong that I still have such strong emotional responses around these events.
It’s made me seriously question my sanity at points.
But then she reminded me that we had been work colleagues during some of those events. And how she remembers talking me through my anger and distress some of those events had caused. And suddenly I don’t feel so crazy.
Maybe I’m not the one who remembers things wrong. And maybe my pain is justified. And if it’s justified, maybe I can find a way to resolve this pain rather than letting it control me and regain some of my missing sanity.
