When you're traumatized, you pick out one thing you remember more than anything else.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Even as I think of myself as a 'rememberer,' I also know my memory is probably doing all this work to reconstruct a narrative where I come off better.
Some memories are realities, and are better than anything that can ever happen to one again.
I don't think that trauma is an illusion; there is no question in my mind that circumstances beyond our control can shape and define us. But ultimately, we make choices about letting ourselves be defined by our pasts.
Memories are what you no longer want to remember.
Why can we remember the tiniest detail that has happened to us, and not remember how many times we have told it to the same person.
I did have imprinted on me the idea of trauma that changes things dramatically and suddenly. As a writer, I return to that again and again because it fascinates me, and it's where I come from, in a sense.
Memory is the thing you forget with.
When you have a traumatic event in your life, you change. You're not the same person you were, and you have to discover who you've become.
These days, there are a great many books about childhood trauma and its effects, but at the time all the experts agreed that one should forget about it as quickly as possible and pick up where you left off.
When it comes to memories of that iconic type, memories that are burned into you, I have maybe ten or so from my childhood. I'm a bad rememberer of situations. I forget almost everything as soon as it happens.