I’m notorious in my family for having a bad memory. I “remember” things that apparently didn’t happen, and I don’t remember a lot of things that did. The first can be attributed to my healthy imagination–I have always made up stories about people or played out scenarios in my head over and over. I’m not sure what causes the latter.
I think it’s because of my “Swiss cheese brain” that I turned into such a compulsive archivist. I logged pretty much every single Internet chat I ever had. Even with people I later blocked. Even if it was just a one or two line conversation.
And I would go back and read logs occasionally, and I was almost always surprised every time I did. I would not remember having the conversation. I would believe it happened, and I would understand my frame of mind, but I wouldn’t remember the conversation itself.
I had a somewhat heated discussion with someone the day before the fire. I’ve thought back on it several times since. It wasn’t a bad conversation, but I expressed my feelings fairly strongly, and I remember having a profound reaction to the person I was talking to. This is the sort of thing you’d think you’d be able to remember.
But of all the chats I’ve had in the past almost ten years now, there are only one or two that I can remember with any clarity…and even then I remember feelings more than substance. I’m going to forget this chat too, I think…I’m going to forget how and why I was so fired up. And now I won’t even have my logs to go back to.
My memory has been a good thing, in a sense. It’s helped me to forgive many people. Things that made me horribly angry in the past are wiped out, so I can move on.
But I’m uncomfortable with that. I’m unhappy that I literally have to forget in order to forgive…and I’m unhappy that I forget so easily in the first place.