Manage the Damage: A Rough Guide to Surviving Your Memories
Reengaging with some of our painful memories need not be the chant that holds us back — it can also be the key that sets us free
I’ll start by stating that I’m no psychologist or counsellor, and that none of what I’m writing is intended to be based on science or some professional understanding of the human psyche.
Neither do I claim to be a philosopher or that particularly wise, even if there is a little of both in me (I stress “little”).
Now that we have those disclaimers out of the way, and I’ve probably lost 97% of readers, I can say, however, that I am a human who has lived an interesting life filled with experiences that have imbued me with a little enlightenment along the way.
I’m also a writer and sometimes-actor, or, in other words, a more-than-casual observer of the human condition and soul.
It’s the former that prompted me to write this piece.
I’ve been working on an autobiographical work for some time, less so to tell my life story and more to bring light to a neurological condition I live with (FSHD — more on that another time). When I handed the current draft to a journo mate, she read it and while she loved it said she would love it more if it was less “self-help” and more about my life.
The guts of her critique was that she (and I trust her judgement) would find it more interesting if I framed as much of the book as possible through the personal lens of my life.
I’m also a writer and sometimes-actor, or, in other words, a more-than- casual observer of the human condition and soul.
Makes sense, right, and not merely because humans are super-curious and voyeuristic, although this is definitely part of it, but because we humans relate best through our shared experiences.
In other words, we look to each other for how we are the same so we can relate better — the ties that bind us, essentially.
Taking on board my mate’s advice, I went back and began a new draft, using the current draft as the foundation and adding to it, through it and around it stories from my life related to FSHD.
What a revelation!
So far, and I’m still going, 26, 000 words (really nowhere near long enough for a published work) has become 47,000 and I’m not even 1/4 of the way through.
Given this is now more like a first draft, it’s what a screenwriting teacher of mine would have called “the vomit draft”, which is exactly, as it so colourfully illustrates, the writer literally puking up as much detail and story as possible in the early stages of the writing.
…we look to each other for how we are the same so we can relate better — the ties that bind us, essentially.
Of course, half of what I’ve written will never see the light of day but it’s important to get it all down to make sure nothing important gets missed and also so that, as any good writer, you can go back later and “kill your darlings” to produce the final sparkling hopefully publishable product.
This is obviously a deeply personal journey to take, as both a writer and more broadly as a human. Going back over the fine details of your life and dredging up all kinds of memories is challenging, sometimes painful, but can also be so incredibly rewarding.
Avoiding pain, physical or emotional, is built into our DNA. From that first time when, as a babe-in-arms, we feel the emotional pain of having to detach from our mother’s teat to when as an eighteen-month-old we accidentally pour hot water all over ourselves, leaving physical scars for life (yes, it happened to me), pain acts as a prime motivator to avoid at all costs personal action that causes damage.
Writing a deeply personal work means thrusting yourself back into both stunningly bright, warm times of happiness, and black and bitter moments of despair. We don’t mind those happy memories, playing them over and over again but the darker, painful times we tend to avoid. However, such avoidance is something of a false economy, potentially more damaging than the original incident in terms of the festering ill it can also create by not attending to the wound.
I subscribe to Greek philosopher Socrates’ notion that, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
This doesn’t mean I’m an advocate for being an emotional masochist. And I’m not suggesting that playing the victim is useful or holding onto the past even when it’s painful, because even those painful times can be vaseline-lensed over and given a more rosy hue with the distance and space of time between then and now.
And I’m DEFINITELY not proposing we dredge up every painful memory. We need the foresight or, where warranted, the professional help, to approach these. We must have the wherewithal to comprehend that some of those memories were so painful or destructive that we have not built the resilience, wisdom or life experience to equip us to manage them in the context of our current existence.
Maybe, just maybe, by looking back over those more painful memories we will find we now hold the key to unlock that shackle or chain…
BUT… reengaging with at least some damage of the past can be both cathartic and freeing in helping us understand better who we are.
Walking back through some of those darker memories can act as a reference point to gauge how we have travelled since, what we have learned from the experience, painful as it was, and how we’ve changed the way we live our life accordingly.
Our painful past need not be a restricting shackle around our heart or chain around our soul preventing us from moving forward.
Maybe, just maybe, by looking back over those more painful memories we will find we now hold the key to unlock that shackle or chain…
Or, even better, that the passing of time has rusted it away, leaving us free.
