Who Else Could I be?

"The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the pales light of all. I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether Ihave lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware." ~ Eugene Ionesco

Thanksgiving itself isn't really worthy of comment. I count the things and people for which I'm grateful first thing in the morning, every morning. It was an episode of "60 Minutes' that really grabbed my attention, shook the foundations of my life and made me ponder the meaning of memory.

The story was about the possibility of giving trauma victims a pill which would diminish the emotional charge associated with traumatic memory for those lucky ones of us who suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Several scientists have noted the connection between trauma and adrenaline. Now, you'd think that would be obvious, wouldn't you? If an animal (in this instance, a human) is in a life-threatening situation and can't escape, can't diminish the potential for harm, adrenaline floods the body. Fight or flight. Adrenaline helps to impress the event into memory. In terms of evolution, it makes complete sense. Animals must know how to avoid similar dangers so that the species has a chance of continuing. Hence the inescapable flashbacks.

There was a time not all that long ago when my life was just a relentless stream of flashbacks and my unsuccessful attempts to move the mind away from them. I'd stop the memory, try to calm myself down and focus on something entirely different, something non-trauma related. It only lasted a moment or two and the brain would be back into flashback mode, reliving the same or a different trauma. I have quite a few to choose from, so my brain never had to work very hard to dredge up something. It was emotionally and physically exhausting. Sometimes it felt like I was lost in time. For instance, I was in my house with my husband and beloved four-legged family members, but my brain and body were in a completely different and terrifying time and space.

I'm well medicated, so I don't have continuous flashbacks anymore. I now have a lot of time when I'm completely present in the here and now. However, flashbacks are very tricky. They can arise without warning from the way light shines into a room, from just being in a bathroom, from picking up a stick in my yard, from a myriad of events or non-events. Whoa. Just thinking about those things is highly anxiety-provoking. It's good to keep the mind focused. Blank time in my brain invites flashbacks. People think I'm acutely productive and disciplined. What they don't consider is that the reasons why I'm always occupied have nothing to do with either of those two qualities. It's just self-preservation.

The pill I spoke of causes the traumatic memory to be more tenuous. From what I gather, the memory is still present, but it becomes a little vague. Obviously, this would work much better for people who've only had one traumatic event. Or maybe two. What about those of us whose lives are one long, continuous traumatic calamity? A professor concerned with the ethical application of scientific advances commented that we are who we are because of what we've lived through. He said that these learning experiences can make us better people. I think that's very true. I think the obverse is also true, but that's another blog entry altogether.

Who I am is directly informed by my experiences. I've had trauma, therefore I am. My non-traumatic memories are sketchy at best, probably because there are so few of them. I don't have any good memories, so the ones that aren't traumatic are just bad memories. If you take traumatic memories away, who am I? Am I just a blank slate? My intense engagement in my surroundings arise from trauma. My intuitive abilities are informed by trauma. My logical abilities spring from trauma. My compassion is deepened by trauma. My sense of humor, my ability to get back up every time something mows me down was forged in trauma. My ethical and moral compass were refined through trauma. If trauma is taken away, I still have those qualities that have developed over time, but would I even know how they came about? When I tried to remember things, would nothing be there?

When I was a young woman, I dreamed of an ordinary life. I always told people I just wished I could be living in the midwest, married to a salesman, content with defrosting my refrigerator (back in the old days, refrigerators did not defrost themselves). In many ways, that's still true. If living that kind of life could free me from the complexities of a difficult childhood, then I'm definitely purchasing a bus ticket to Ohio. I now know with certainty that which I guessed at in my youth. Ohio will not free me from the past. However, there may be a pill that serves up a little slice of Ohio for me. Would I take it? Probably not.

When I was a freshman in college, I took a Sociology class taught by a Chinese man whose accent made him barely intelligible. The question he posed to us (and it took me a while to figure out what the hell he was aking) the first day was, "If you could take a pill that would make you always happy, would you take it?" Of course that just leads me to ponder the meaning of the word "happy." Since I still can't define it, I always arrive back at the beginning. I am my memories. Who else could I possibly be?