remembering/forgetting
If you are new to reading Oh Two Seven just a quick note that this is a place where I am capturing on a fairly regular basis my headspace as I deal with and work through the life altering experience of divorce. It will morph overtime, hopefully, as that part of my life fades and my "new life" takes shape, but for now that is the context of my writing.
I've been using Day One on my iPhone, MacBook, iPad, etc., for 12 years to keep my personal journal. I have still kept up with writing in notebooks as-well. I love to write and I love to think, and so the two go nicely together whether recording something in my "digital" journal or in a paper journal. The medium doesn't matter as much to me as capturing moments in time do. Those moments can be actual events that I am recording, "we did this and that", or my thoughts on life, more philosophical in nature.
One feature of Day One is "On this day". Tap or click into it and I can see journal entires on this day from the previous years. At this point some days have twelve or more entires, all separated by a year of time. This is a nice feature, but can also be something I regret using. I have many regrets from how I parented when my son was 4, 5, and 6 and so revisiting those in my journal as I wrote about them is depressing and sometimes I won't even finish reading it. The past is the past. I made mistakes, I have regrets, but today is really all that matters. How I parent today is more important than how I parented yesterday. How I am present today for my son is more important than how I was or wasn't present for him yesterday, last week, last year, and so on.
Today is all that matters, but I can't help but go back into the recesses of my mind to try to remember how things were. This is where the "on this day" feature is nice because it helps me remember certain events. But then I struggle to remember how I felt when thinking on certain memories.
I'll see a picture or read a journal entry about taking a family day trip somewhere. Just a simple trip with a small family who has a toddler with them. I'll see the pictures I took and then saved into an entry, and I'll read the words I wrote about the day...but I don't have any actual memory of it. I see the photos, read the words, and think "wow, we did that?" instead of "Oh yeah, I remember that!"
It bothers me that I can't remember. Did my brain put certain things in certain places as a form of coping, escaping, fleeing? If so, why? What happened that was so bad? And why don't I remember that? Why can I only remember certain very specific memories, including how I felt at the time, but a vast majority of my past is a blackhole?
Is it a bad thing that I can't remember? I think yes and no. No, it is not an issue to be concerned with because we move forward as humans, we keeping going, that is in our nature. Yes, it is an issue to be concerned with because we need to use our past to direct and influence our future. If we can't remember our past we are likely to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. By remembering our past we can look at it objectively, analyze it, learn from it, and change how we behave in the present and future.
I don't remember how I was as a son or brother. I don't remember how I was as a husband and dad. I know I was (and am) those things, but I cannot actively remember how I was. How was I as a son? How was I as a brother? How was I as a young husband? How was I as a young dad?
Why do I care? I'd like to know and understand a bit more of why I am the way I am. Why am I all or nothing? Is that just "who I am" or was that caused by something? And not that that characteristic is a good or bad characteristic, but why is that how I am? Why is moderation so difficult for me?
I digress. I'm going down a rabbit-hole with these words and they seem to be leading us nowhere at the moment. But this is my current headspace, first thing in the morning. I woke up in my apartment, a balmy 75 degrees, and had a moment of: whoa, where am I? And then I remembered, oh yeah, that's right. It is over.
Ups and downs. Good days and bad. Acknowledge it then let it go.