The future of memories past
I saw the girl looking back at me in the photo on Facebook memories, “On this day 12 years ago” it said. Her hair was straight, her body slender, her eyes squinted as if she had a taste of lemon, but her smile while gorgeous was sad. Her eyes that squinted showed. This is how I remembered my twenties. Smiling through grueling times. I hated myself when I thought of that time in my life. My self-loathing took over and lead my memories.
I pulled up albums from that time, I looked at more pictures. I smiled looking at one next to an indigenous man in Borneo carrying a stringed musical instrument. I remembered his toothless smile as he played for us in that longhouse. More and more images I scrolled through from that trip started to make me cry. It looked like I was happy, but I knew I wasn’t. I pulled up more albums, I looked happy on the streets of London with my hands in the air, in celebration that I was there. The smile made me sad.
Was I remembering wrongly? Was I sad all those times? No one’s ever sad all the time, are they? Still, that was what I remembered. That was how I had always remembered my twenties. Drudged in mistakes and mayhem that was my life. I hated my life and everything that reminded me of it. I deleted a whole album that triggered me. The smiles, the friends, the places were triggering.
Whenever people reminisced about their wild twenties, I cringed, hoping I wouldn’t be invited to contribute to the conversation. There was nothing to be told. I didn’t even have to talk about a specific memory. Just the thought of the times made my insides curl. I did not want to be reminded of them.
Looking at this particular picture of me, I realized something. I was smiling because my friend tried a drink I recommended her and had spit it out in surprise of how awful it was. I laughed thinking about my friend. I thought about her for a second and remembered our times chatting by the pool, floating on the water. We laughed a lot for one reason or another. It reminded me of the time I missed her when I went to London for a few weeks, and we kept up with chats over Skype. I still missed her, a space warmed in the corners of my heart. I found a picture of me smiling wide with a Japanese guy while I was still in my harness. I had just landed from skydiving. I was beside myself with disbelief and joy just the same. I willed myself to think of all the memories as I looked through the pictures again and again. The faces and places I had been. It was incredible, I had traveled to five of the seven continents by the end of my twenties.
In the past I’ve relayed information about my adventures, feigning excitement, mirroring the person I was talking with. They seemed mere facts of history that I had no real enjoyment in recounting. Something was happening now, my heart laughed with me, my insides fluttered with something so foreign to me. I think I was basking in the nostalgia. The laughs were genuine, my smile involuntary.
I put my phone away and slouched back in my chair. Eyes closed, I breathed in the confusion. I grounded myself in the moment. I started to see that I was in a very different place in my mind recently. I was balanced, I was at peace, I felt happiness. I couldn’t have seen what I see now with all the pain of the years past. Looking through mucky lenses, that was all I saw, muck. It was difficult to view life any other way in those years when I was wounded and not seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. All I saw was the quicksand of the past pulling me back in. Sorrow and woe were a comfortable place to lie. The only place I knew to rest after trauma struck. Many of my actions born of bipolar were dismissed as such, I told myself they were not real experiences because I was in episodes. Sure there was pain, sure there was fear, sure there was guilt. A fact of my life, that could not be denied as it was part of my healing. They were life experiences, my life. I had lived them. I was not able to escape the past but I sure as hell could alter my perceptions, and this revelation brought me joy.
I choose joy. I choose rose colored glasses against mucky ones. I choose to live in the now that is peaceful, that is true. I choose healing. I choose this truth.