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I can't remember you...
Apr. 14th, 2013 01:31 pmSomething that really, seriously disturbs the hell out of me:
So many of my childhood memories are not real. I've been patching them together, filling holes with other holes. Like my mother's first marriage, how my parents actually met, when I first dyed my hair, how we got my first kitten. I swear to my mother that she told me these things and she denies them vehemently with her amazing memory... which means I am taking memories of all sorts of things and smashing them together to create new, fictional memories. Part of me is absolutely terrified that I have become my own unreliable narrator. I have told all my friends these stories, and now they are no longer true.
When my parents first met in the '60s when she was 16 and he 25, My father did yell at my mother about touching his paintings, but only because she backed into a painting, in his studio, after being awestruck, because someone introduced them. My mother's first husband started a truck company to shuffle around 1970s rock bands, they never went to Woodstock, and as soon as they divorced Mom and Dad moved in together and married seven years later. The story of my technically miscarried brother Jesse is still true. My mother never dyed my hair red. My mother was the one who chose Muffin because she was the only calico in a litter of white. I did scribble the names of all the Ninja Turtles on my bedroom wall in permanent marker. My mother and I really did have a telepathic moment when naming a porcelain doll when I read her mind.
I don't think I can trust myself anymore.
So many of my childhood memories are not real. I've been patching them together, filling holes with other holes. Like my mother's first marriage, how my parents actually met, when I first dyed my hair, how we got my first kitten. I swear to my mother that she told me these things and she denies them vehemently with her amazing memory... which means I am taking memories of all sorts of things and smashing them together to create new, fictional memories. Part of me is absolutely terrified that I have become my own unreliable narrator. I have told all my friends these stories, and now they are no longer true.
When my parents first met in the '60s when she was 16 and he 25, My father did yell at my mother about touching his paintings, but only because she backed into a painting, in his studio, after being awestruck, because someone introduced them. My mother's first husband started a truck company to shuffle around 1970s rock bands, they never went to Woodstock, and as soon as they divorced Mom and Dad moved in together and married seven years later. The story of my technically miscarried brother Jesse is still true. My mother never dyed my hair red. My mother was the one who chose Muffin because she was the only calico in a litter of white. I did scribble the names of all the Ninja Turtles on my bedroom wall in permanent marker. My mother and I really did have a telepathic moment when naming a porcelain doll when I read her mind.
I don't think I can trust myself anymore.
