Wednesday, December 3, 2008

How powerful is the mind

I don't know what made me think of this exactly. But here it is.

When I was a kid, about 10 or so. 2 bad things happened to me. I remember when I'd start to feel anxious about them, I'd just remember "there are just 2 things I don't think about it." So I just don't think about it. The start of the story would pop in my head and I'd say, don't think about it, and I'd stop. I always remembered that I blocked out 2 things.

One of them was this story: my little brother and I were swimming at a hotel swimming pool. We always stayed in a hotel with water slides when we'd come to the city to go Christmas shopping. Anyway, I was a good swimmer and my little brother was just learning to swim. So we play a game, we inch along the edge of the swimming pool, I'm behind him, both our hands are holding the edge, my arms around his (make sense?). We go to the deep end. (there are no lifeguards in hotel swimming pools usually.) Anyway, there are some adults along the pool edge, so we can't just inch past them. We go around them, push out, and jump back in. We can't touch right? But it was basically like a little hop. Then there are about 3 adults next to each other. We try and hop around them, little brother panics, starts the drowning thing, clings to me, climbs on top of me trying to reach air. Meanwhile I could push us back to the wall and swim fine, but my brother is basically dunking me and holding my arms down and drowning me! I don't know how long this goes on at all. It felt like quite a long time. Maybe 1 minute. We're drowning, 3 feet from the wall of a pool. Then the person we were jumping around grabs us and pulls us to the side. The horrible part was the after part, that's what I still don't like thinking about. My little brother crying, my parents talking to me, me crying, feeling so guilty for almost killing my brother. But when ever I'd start to remember that, I'd just be like "yeah that happened and I don't think about it. That and that other thing."

I still don't remember what that other thing is. Isn't that weird? I really chose to mentally block something from my memory and it worked. I don't think it's anything really horrible like abuse or something. But still, what was it?

3 comments:

Sara said...

crazy. Repression is a powerful thing. There is lots of debate on whether it is healthy or not. To repress out of memory - that is powerful!

Jen said...

That IS crazy....I wonder if you will ever remember it??? And hopefully it isn't traumatizing now!!!

I kind of know what you mean though...I "talk" myself out of being scared (and that might sound silly but hear me out). I used to get really bad night terrors when I was a child, where I would scream and scream and scream and I would be awake but still feel like I was in my nightmare (seriously freaked my parents out since I have, as my friend puts it, a horror movie scream) - then my dreams changed to a point where in my dream I would lose my voice and my parents said I was "dry screaming" in real life and I thought that if I couldn't scream I couldn't get out of my dream...so I learned to talk myself out of being scared...like changing the subject in my head...I still have to do it now because there are certain things that trigger the night terrors again and I have freaked Danny out a few times as well...

So yeah...the memory is DEFINITELY a crazy thing....(sorry for the lengthy story!)

Angela Power said...

That would have been super scarry.

I remember little tidbits of things every now and then that make me sad to remember :-( Our minds are amazing amazing things.