No Wrinkles Available For Bad Memories

They say that every time you learn something new or make a new memory you form a new wrinkle in your brain. If that’s true then I must have a little OCD midget in my skull with an ironing board because my memory is terrible. The little overachiever is up there smoothing out all the wrinkles and doing his best to keep things clean and organized. Not organized like a vast library full of endless knowledge with a card catalog to easily retrieve said knowledge when needed; more like a house that someone just moved out of – there’s no clutter or mess but there is also a very noticeable lack of stuff. An old couch that wasn’t worth moving, a half eaten carton of ice cream in the freezer and one of those ink blot pictures in a broken frame hanging crooked on the wall that looks like something different depending on whoever is looking at it or whatever your current mood or state of mind is – today it looks a lot like a monkey in a row boat with a banana shaped oar wondering whether he should keep fighting the current or just give up and eat the banana...at least that’s what it looks like to me.

I’ve gone lately to keeping my thoughts as disorganized as possible thinking that if I make the midgets job miserable he’ll eventually quit and my memory will improve. I would just fire him but I can hardly justify firing him for doing what is obviously his job. Plus he probably has an OCD midget wife and three little OCD midget kids that he needs to keep fed and I don’t want to be responsible for the starvation of an entire OCD midget family. So I’ll stick with the disorganized thinking and the hope that he will eventually get fed up with the over abundance of work and the total lack of appreciation and go off looking for employment between someone else’s ears. Still, I remain careful not to be too disorganized in my thinking. If I push the little neat freak too hard he might fill my head with embarrassing false memories before he leaves and I’ll walk around for the rest of my life remembering the joys of my short term stint as a nun in my early twenties and making claims about how I invented the internet. It’s a theory anyway and I’ll keep you updated on how it’s working out.

Anyway, until I run off the midget, I’ll have to contend with my memory shortfalls. To list a few: I am completely inept when it comes to remembering people’s names even just moments after I’ve been told; I’ll tell stories to people completely forgetting about the fact that they were there with me when it happened; and people often remind me of events that happened when we were together that I have absolutely no memory of whatsoever. These are all things that would be nice to have stored neatly in my brain’s computer filing system for quick access in individual folders labeled “People’s Names”, “Who was with me”, and “Fun things I’ve done that people will remind me of later” respectively. However they seem to have been moved to the Trash Bin (My brain is Pro-Global Warming so it still uses the old Trash Bin rather than the now common Recycle Bin) or misfiled someone amongst all the 1’s and 0’s along with the memory of what exactly all those 1’s and 0’s mean.

Now I’ve completely lost track of the point I was trying to get to…oooh, look, something shiny!

So with my brain having about as many wrinkles as an infant’s fart maker on which to store memories I can’t waste valuable storage space on bad memories. When I say “can’t” I really should be saying “shouldn’t” because I do even though I shouldn’t because I can’t can’t. If there was anybody still reading after the first three paragraphs I probably just lost them with that sentence.

I’m not haunted much by bad memories of personal failures, bad decisions or embarrassing moments. I live my life with no regrets save one and that’s words for another ramble. The memories that seem to plaque my thoughts, rearing their spiteful head just when I thought I’d gotten over them are those where I feel I was wronged in some way. Saturated in bitterness the events replay themselves over and over in my head. With each replay my brain adding to them a last word on my part that went unspoken during the actual event…one last zing to put the perpetrator in their place, forever proving that they were wrong and I was right. If you were to produce an action movie based on the poison my mind feeds itself it would end with the hero and villain locked hand to wrist while the villain dangled over the edge of a bridge the hero’s weakening grip the only thing postponing the villains pending judgment. The villain’s hardened eyes finally begin showing understanding of his wrongdoing. As the hero’s grip slips the words “I’m sorry” trail off chasing their body of origin both growing farther and farther away from me and closer and closer to the judgment below. But this isn’t a movie and since I’ve yet to get any of those staring in these memories to hang from my arm over a bridge I guess I’d better find a better way to deal with it.

Truth be told no one has ever wronged me enough to warrant the fantasized retribution that my mind, poisoned with bitterness, bestowed upon them. To be even more truthful, I’ve probably done more harm to myself through my own personal bitterness than all those that wronged me before. I don’t want to be bitter. I don’t even want to think about the events. I just want to move on, lesson learned, stronger. But just when I think I’ve gotten over it the vindictive memory cunningly attaches itself to another pure memory and jumps out into the forefront of my thought dragging the happiness away and replacing it with frustration. As many times as I’ve snatched that bitter weed from the ground the root remains and it continues to come back choking out the good memories and spreading to take over my thoughts.

I plea with the Lord to take the memories away but He doesn’t answer. He doesn’t answer because He’s already told me once and confirmed it and He’s not going to say it again. I ignore the silence with defiance. My plea continues. Help me move on. Help me get over it. Just make it go away. Give me back my joy and direction. I’m willing to go anywhere, give up anything, do anything, anything, anything…anything but that. I’ve tried. I can’t. The thought makes me nauseous. There’s has to be another way. Of course there’s another way. Can’t there be another way? Silence.

I don’t want to call him.