9/5/10

 
      Here's today's creation. Looks much more dominantly black in reality. We'll see when I take pictures tomorrow since there's NO WORK! Yahoooooo!
      Another Sunday come and gone and this is what I have to show for it. I mean that in a good way. Man, before I was medicated, time would trickle by so agonizingly slowly. My childhood is like a never-ending trap I was caught in that I simply couldn't see my way out of.  An imprisonment of sorts, always having to do what others told me to. Now that I've joined the rest of humanity, I finally see what people meant when they'd comment on how fast the years fly by.  People, adults, would always be making a comment about how they still felt like a youngster trapped in an adult's body or some such. And I'd always think- 'that alone shows you're an old fogie! Have you ever heard a kid say they felt like a kid in a kid's body? No. They say they feel like adults that no one takes seriously b/c they're trapped in a child's body." Duh! 
       I could always feel how impossibly distant these people were from childhood, forgetting the desperation children have to grow, blind to their own very adult seriousness- all routine, never jumping on a swing or playing in the street. I'd wonder why, when friends came over, the adults wouldn't join the kids playing in the yard. I remember wondering about this on a red tricycle in our tiny backyard in Uruguay. I imagined my parents and their friends stopping their endless chatter for once to climb our tire swing or get on my tricycle. I realized then that talking had to be playing for them, or they wouldn't do it all the time. I was quite content with my realization.
      I was 3 or 4 when that happened, though no one believes me b/c they say I couldn't possibly remember that much. In fact, I even remember getting my diapers changed, if only the one time. One of the tortures of my mind pre-medication was its instant access to every single event it had ever lived through. Hard to get up and fix yourself a sandwich when you are constantly seeing several movies of everything that's ever happened to you and that you've ever thought or heard about.  
      School teachers always had one or two stories they told at the beginning of the year then forgot the telling and told again in the second semester. I'd look around at the faces taking in the story as if for the first time and feel evermore isolated in my giant mind. The time since medication has been such a blur.  My husband will tell me about things we did together and I'll listen happily, as if to a stranger's anecdote. 
      People always say they wish they had better memory. The fools! You might wish you remembered where you left the keys or what you were supposed to get at the store, but you don't want to remember humiliating episodes from adolescence or how scared you were the 1st time your parents got mad at you. And remember it in such detail that you turn red, you find yourself covering your ears and yelling LALALALA in hopes of blocking it out. 
      One thing, though. If anyone ever said, "Where's the _____" my mind would instantly recall the last time I saw or handled whatever it was and I'd know right away, no matter how messy the room, where every single object in it was and precisely how it got there. That trick would come in handy these days with all my supplies .... Though I'd be so overwhelmed by existence I wouldn't be able to make anything so what's the use?
       Sheesh, I wonder where all that came from?


3 comments:

Penelope said...

I hate not having a good memory. Scratch that- not just a not good memory, a really seriously crap memory. Most of my bad credit comes from me just forgetting to pay bills. I don't remember things like what we talked about when I met Lisa Gerrard, or my first trip to England, or half of High School (which I actually liked). I'd use a camera to record the memories of my life like Nan Goldin, but I forget to do that too.

On the plus side, that necklace up there is mind-blowing.

Spirited Earth said...

wow, never though fogetting might be such a good gift..
i am well blessed with that..uh?
what were we talkin' about?
yor work is wonderful.

Chelsea (TangoPig) said...

Huh! I've never actually heard a personal account by someone with a crazy good memory like that. I've got a spotty memory - I remember my second birthday and exactly what my Mom said that time I skipped school, but ask me where I left my keys or what we had for dinner two days ago and I'm a blank. I tell myself it makes me more interesting. :p

Ooh, I'm in love with your s-shaped connector there.