I saw this on the web today and related so very well.
I was musing on this and thinking back to yesterday and some good memories, you know how that is, some lovely memories that are spoiled and tainted by subsequent events with the same people. I do this kind of thinking in the car where no one can see me. For sometimes I cry and think how did something so lovely go so very lopsided, how did such happy times become so overshadowed?
Even writing about it later stirs up the same thoughts. And the writing is poorly formed, too emotional. How do others manage damaged memories? Do they allow the scarring to overpower them or compartmentalize it? That is, just remember the goodness in completeness or believe it to be a false front in light of later nastiness or poor behaviours?
Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
Yes, I know what you are talking about. What helps me is to see that this is a universal condition.
ReplyDeleteWere you reading my mind? This week I was ready to stop blogging for good. Not wanting to let down the LBC group kept me going for a few days. I will think it out again over the weekend.
ReplyDeleteI think I know what you are talking about.
ReplyDeletePeople let me down, violating the trust I have gifted them with. I deal with this in distinct stages. The first is disbelief, which is brief. The second is devastation, that I their character is so weak as to dishonour a trust. The third, which arrives the next day, always the next day, is rage at their stupidity, at the waste and destruction of trust. The final phase, after a few days of seeing red, is the shrugging of shoulders, and acceptance that humans are less than perfect and that the trust will never come back.
I am always glad that I did it though, trusted.
Yes, I understand you. I had a similar experience recently. Someone I thought had become a good friend suddenly turned on me and shut me out, for no reason that I could comprehend. And yes, I tend to deal with it by remembering how good it was while it lasted and putting the nasty ending behind me.
ReplyDeleteHattie:
ReplyDeleteYes, that helps. Thanks.
XO
WWW
GM:
ReplyDeleteOh no! Please! No!
Take a breather if you must but you give up blogging? Shyte missus. NO!!!!
XO
WWW
Maggie:
ReplyDeleteI imagine this is what is the most upsetting about it all. Even if healed, how uncertain would be the footsteps after the unravelling.
XO
WWW
Nick:
ReplyDeleteI am so sorry this happened to you. It is a chilling shock when it happens. Disbelief too.
I love how Maggie describes it.
XO
WWW
Yes, I agree with Hattie.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I still feel moved to check out behaviours - mine and theirs - a la Eric Berne "Games People Play". I ask myself how I might have contributed to the upsetting behaviour. Often it has been the other's false front and I feel glad I've rumbled it. When that happens, I don't want to spend any more time with them so do write it off to experience.
Maybe all this seems callous and introspective, but after many past difficult episodes I find that is best for me.
I hope you find a way to protect yourself.
Pamela:
ReplyDeleteI believe communication is key and if that is missing it is impossible to even guess what is in another's mind, it is their stuff after all and we are not privy to it. Unfortunately.
"Unconscious cruelty" as I sometimes call it. To ease the pain, I guess. I could not stand the thought of deliberate infliction.
XO
WWW
I would hate to think people present a false front, but a lot of times that is the conclusion I come to also. Yes, I read that book 'Games people play' and although it is awfully cynical, I do think I ought to apply its principles to my life again. Maybe I should first read it again and apply it to myself also.
ReplyDeleteIrene:
ReplyDeleteMe too. The thought is abhorrent to me but I have such difficulty in removing the dark screen now placed in front of previously warm memories.
XO
WWW
I had one very close friend of twenty-five years who turned against me for no apparent reason. I believe it was partly jealousy that I was doing better than he was financially, and had moved to the States. It still hurts when I think of it, but I try to put it from my mind. There's no harm in being a little arrogant and allowing oneself to think, "It's THEIR loss, not mine."
ReplyDeleteRJA:
ReplyDeleteIt is difficult when one can't really nail the reason for sure. I had a friend who took my moving to Newfoundland as a personal insult and put very little effort into maintaining our long term relationship which I had viewed as unbreakable.
Live and learn, yeah?
XO
WWW
I know what you mean, WWW, and I like your wording in response to Irene: 'dark screen'. Describes very well what I recently mentioned: How do I reconcile the perception I have of someone honourable whose (recent) behaviour doesn't make sense, shows that person from a side I never expected/suspected. I'd just love to be able to close the shutters but (for practical reasons) I can't. Since I do not believe relationships (of any any kind) to be one way streets I torture myself what it is that I have done to provoke the incredible. To be honest I wish I had done something to justify this other person's actions (or rather 'inactions', leaving me in the dark). Too many in- and outsiders have told me it's nothing to do with me. But then, cue cat chasing her own tail, how can I have mistaken someone so badly? And before anyone jumps to wrong conclusion: No romance involved. Far worse.
ReplyDeleteMay both our veils and those of your other commentators lift. Sometimes the saying that time heals all wounds makes me snort with derision. A wound may heal but the scar will forever be a reminder.
U
Wow Ursula, it seems like you have been inside my mind.
ReplyDeleteExactly. This is it exactly. I haven't been sleeping and no that old fallacy about time is BS. I know that. The damage, the scar tissue lives on as a permanent reminder.
Acceptance is what others have been telling me. You have done your best, to the limit of your abilities. Accept what these wounded loved ones need to do for themselves and keep the door open. The door has been open for yonks and offers of going to the ends of the earth to try and heal whatever is ailing them. *Slam*. Crickets.
Thanks for your own insight and wisdom.
XO
WWW
I think this is related, how I did it, and have been so shocked by the realization that I have put that away for awhile. I'll look at it again latter. I can't deal with it now. When my brother died the memories were so painful, angry, unbearable, really truly. I wrote a eulogy. I poured my heart out with love for an older brother who tagged me along, ran races with his silly sister, took her fishing, paddled a canoe just for her, teased her and adored her. Everyone was charmed, nodded, yes that was him, wasn't I lucky to have those memories. He was so special they remembered. Problem is I made it all up to replace the brother who had been. The sick twisted mentally ill passive aggressive sexual abuser lover of causing pain and fear, psychological tormenter alcoholic and drug adcit he'd been, from about age 14. And everyone pretending that was the hero, knew it because he was the same way to most of them, at some time if not always.
ReplyDeleteThat's how I dealt with his memory. But I didn't realize it until about eight years after I'd written it. I'd written a brother for me. That's how I remember him, because that's how I survived my childhood, building false memories.
Memories. Light the corners of my mind. Misty water colour memories.
The way we weren't.
Oh anon:
ReplyDeleteHow devastating for you but sometimes that is the only way we can cope. I had to do the same with some of my history. Tightly lidded box for years and years. Never shared.
And then the dyke springs a leak, and another, and it all comes tumbling out.
There is no way to walk around pain, we have to go through it.
I hope you are doing much better now that you are in the truth.
XO
WWW
Oh, I do, I do! My decision about what to do with those feelings of sadness at the loss of what seemed like a real friendship varies from day to day. Some days I compartmentalize, some days I blame, first myself then the other party. Some days I just shrug.
ReplyDeleteThat big yellow slice? It's biggest because when we allow those emotions to dance through us without judgement, we are more able to connect with others in the telling of our tales. I can't find who wrote this but I memorized it years ago:
Better unspoken and left unsaid,
Than to bead it back on a broken thread.
Better unanswered and made to end,
as the tree-tangled kite
is left to the wind.
Pauline:
ReplyDeleteThat was so helpful, thank you. Words to soothe when all else fails.
XO
WWW
Brilliant chart!
ReplyDeleteRe painful memories. I guess I just try not to think of them. Or at least not blame myself for them if I think of them. I also accept that they happen to everyone and it's part of the human experience.
Laura:
ReplyDeleteI do my best but am reminded over and over again by the fact that these people are family and meant to be part of a tight clan. Alas, they are worse than enemies.
And that's what hurts the most.
XO
WWW