Writing down memories

[DaisyGirl77]

Long time no write.

For quite a while now, I've been wanting to write down my story, but I've had so many fits & starts I had no idea where to begin.  Starting with a "Once upon a time" didn't work.  Neither did jumping right into it, or starting with my parents' backgrounds.

Who knew writing about yourself would be so difficult?

I literally googled "How to write an autobiography", lol.  It's not an autobio, it's a memoir.  My life isn't over yet.

Anyway, one of the suggestions I read was to do a data dump of all the memories I have and organize it later.

I finally did that last night.  I don't know what I am, but I've found myself emotional trying to find a church we used to go to when I was young.  Like, I found myself literally crying while I used street map view on them.

I know I'm definitely triggered; my dreams in the six hours I got (because I sent myself to bed really, really late) tell me so.  It's one thing to know your childhood is dark.  It's quite another seeing it all typed out in black & white.

It is devastating for child me.  In a way, it's healing, too.

...I'm not sure where I'm going with this, but felt I needed to share.  Thanks for listening.

[Happypants]

HI DaisyGirl77.  I don't know if my response has much to offer except to say that I believe that sometimes you need to follow these unexplainable ideas in the hope that there's some subconscious purpose behind it.  In my experience there's usually hurt followed by some sort of acceptance.  It's strange timing for me to read your post.  I've had some peace through less contact until an emergency this week which meant spending time alone with my parent - this felt "ok" at the time, but as usual the pain and confusion hit me in the days that followed.  In the midst of it all, I had a sudden compulsion to find my childhood (early, happy childhood) house on google maps and try to trace the exact route that myself and my brother used to follow coming home from school.  For some reason, it did give me peace (with some sadness) and allowed me to separate the good and the bad of the last 30 years of adulthood.  I completely understand the dual effects of following these processes 

[walking on broken glass]

I have been thinking of doing some writing myself because I always find it cathartic! Not a full recount of my life or anything, just thoughts and stories that come to my head, sort of snippets of my childhood and early adulthood. Somehow I haven't found the strength to do it yet and I kinda dread it because I feel it might open up wounds. Keep us posted and let us know if it helps!

[DaisyGirl77]

HI DaisyGirl77.  I don't know if my response has much to offer except to say that I believe that sometimes you need to follow these unexplainable ideas in the hope that there's some subconscious purpose behind it.  In my experience there's usually hurt followed by some sort of acceptance.  It's strange timing for me to read your post.  I've had some peace through less contact until an emergency this week which meant spending time alone with my parent - this felt "ok" at the time, but as usual the pain and confusion hit me in the days that followed.  In the midst of it all, I had a sudden compulsion to find my childhood (early, happy childhood) house on google maps and try to trace the exact route that myself and my brother used to follow coming home from school.  For some reason, it did give me peace (with some sadness) and allowed me to separate the good and the bad of the last 30 years of adulthood.  I completely understand the dual effects of following these processes 

I did the same, tracing my own childhood house.  The place wasn't happy, but I have happy...er? memories of it than I do with the house in the town I consider my hometown.  As far as the church, I ended up emailing the town to inquire about it since I cannot find anything on it.  I'm waiting for an answer from them.  I think it closed.  It has to be, if I can't find any information on this place.

It's really bittersweet to know things are gone.  It's nice that the world moves on & things change, but it'd be nice if things stayed the same, just for a little while.  Or if there was a video to walk though somewhere so I could see the changes when this type of mood strikes.

I know writing down my memories or even the idea of an autobiography can be seen as a bit navel-gazing, but it did show where I learned my destructive self talk when I'm triggered.  It's definitely early childhood, & there are a lot of those patterns in my mental tape that need breaking.  It's a personal project for me since I have so many memories that are just vague blurs, like they happened over a period of years, not as specific ages or around specific events.  I'm hoping this shakes loose some hidden memories that I've hidden away because they were too traumatic.  It's time for me to start breaking down that wall I created between them & my conscious self & start integrating those into my head.

I'll be in therapy until I die, or until I end up in an ALF & DGAF anymore cuz I wanna croak already or something.  Lol.

[JustKeepTrying]

When I left my ex I began a dump every night for years. I have pages and pages of uncensored blind writing that just got all the poison out of my veins. I don't do it as often now but still feel the need from time to time to open my journal and write it down - like bleeding on the page. I also wrote a limited bio but have not published it. I did for myself - to help put my past in perspective.

It takes courage and it is healing. Congratulations. It is not easy and admirable.

[blacksheep7]

Hi DaisyGirl77,

I also plan to write my memoire very soon, when I fnish my other project, organizing my pictures.

It will be about my happy memories because there were many throughout my life, 60 decades if I leave behind the abuse at home. Another reason is that I have several journal notebooks  while healing, I'll leave it at that, separating the two.
I wouldn't see myself writing it if I hadn't healed my upbringing, second nature would be opening up the wounds. To many triggers.

best wishes 

[MaxedOut]

Sounds like a good breakthrough and not surprising strong emotions are breaking through as well. This may not be useful to you but my therapist made a good observation last week: so much of dealing with a person with PD is censoring our words, carefully engineering whether we say something, how we say it, when we say it, the tone and facial expressions, etc. This really extreme verbal control. And processing/saying our thoughts even and perhaps most importantly to ourselves can be a really good way to process, find truth, and literally get it out.

I did a decent amount of contemporaneous writing when married to my exuBPDw and some since and there is a stiltedness there. Partly it's about the usual writer/writing things (though I write a lot for my career so not a significant hurdle typically). Part is about that delay of thought to hand to screen nudging in layers of control and overthinking that are really rooted in the dynamics of that relationship and my adaptations to it.

This contrasts with a few times when I turned on voice memo on my phone while driving and recounting things in a really honest and pretty clear way. Nowadays there are so many tech helpers to convert talking to text that it may be worth experimenting with that as a complementing piece of your memoir project.

Also, people get really hung up on the start and in most cases it changes profoundly and often an editor will suggest something like deleting the first chapter/chunk anyway as the work often starts stronger when it's already going. And the good beginnings often are figured out well after much of the rest is developed. Which is to say, good job using other approaches and don't sweat nailing the beginning at the beginning.

Mary Karr has a pretty engaging book on memoir writing, BTW.

[mary_poppins]

Hi Daisy Girl.

I think what you're doing is really brave and catharctic. It may help shed some unfelt emotions from yoru childhood. Good for you for doing this. You're inspiring me to do something similar.
Let us know how this exercise helped you.

[skybox]

Inspired by this. Talking to old friend from teenage years after decades, unleashed memories and finally allowed me to name unrelated events ( to myself- not connected  to the friend ) as neglect and abuse. It's been a year of finally letting myself admit it, and find compassion for the kid that I was.  It's been exhausting, just going through the memory stage and grieving. Perhaps writing could speed up the release.

[1footouttadefog]

I wish I would have taken time to write more along the way.  You won't regret having done so.

Best of luck and I hope your efforts bring healing and strength.