By Helen Thomas
Content Warnings:
This piece describes the effects of childhood trauma and depression on memory.
How many memories did I never make?
It’s a question I’m forced to ask myself whenever a friend mentions their favourite TV show. I have heard the name in passing, but it’s likely that I don’t know any more than that. My friends are always confused. They ask if I had access to Foxtel and Nickelodeon, or if I had watched ABC ME, and then they start telling me everything I had missed out on as a child. As if I didn’t know already. At one point, they began making a list of every movie and TV show I had never watched and promised one day to sit me down and have me watch them all. Sadly, they haven’t followed through on that offer, and I don’t have the time or energy to do it myself. I feel it would be more fun listening to them talk about their experiences without seeing it myself.
I remember at one point wanting to watch ABC ME, but I was too young, so I wasn’t allowed. By the time I had access, none of the shows interested me anymore. My ten-year-old self found them too childish. By that time, I had ‘grown-up’ and become ‘too mature’ for them. Looking back, I realise how much I had missed because of forced maturity. I can’t remember the last time I ran around on the playground with my friends, making up stories about dragons or haunted teddy bears. Or when those stories stopped being created out of wonder but instead as a way to cope. I don’t know when others learned to have proper conversations or understand their emotions, or when they learned to finally become grown ups. For years, I felt like I had matured too quickly and then stagnated while everyone else continued at the proper pace. I never had the memories that would help build me into a person. Whether it was because of my paralysing fear of making a mistake, my trauma, or the strict rules I was forced to follow at that age, I can’t look back like others can and think about the lovely times when kids were allowed to just be kids. I never made those memories, but I am trying to now.
Now in my twenties, I’m revisiting things I used to like and developing new interests that others, including my younger self, would see as childish. I have fallen in love with shows such as She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018), Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005), and Steven Universe (2013). I have dug up my old colouring books and Pokémon games. I began collecting plushies, and while some are proudly displayed in a cabinet, others I actually keep on the bed or the couch. Now that I have the space, I have decided to create the memories that I had never made. But then, there are the ones I did make.
*
How many memories have I forgotten?
I dread the times when people I know begin their sentences with ‘Hey, remember when…’ and follow it with an event they expect me to know. Whether it was from primary school, high school, or even last week, the memory might not appear.
Time freezes, and I go searching. I dive into the blank space where the memory should’ve been. At first, I try to be gentle, coaxing it out like a scared animal hiding underneath a bed. I always hope that this method will work. It hasn’t yet. I then begin poking and prodding, trying to find solid sections in the blank space. Sometimes I run into an invisible wall and spend time running my hands over its surface, hoping to find an entrance or a way around. Eventually, I punch, I kick, I scream, wanting to find the memory that I know should exist. And sometimes, just sometimes, I find it.
When others describe their nostalgia, it sounds like a burst of colour. I tend to agree, but I don’t think it’s always the same. Because if I find the memory, it’s closer to a dark bruise, or blood from an unhealed scab, not the bright, fun colours associated with childhood. Usually, when I come back from my search, and rejoin the conversation, all I do is nod. Then I smile. Then I lie and say, ‘Oh, I remember that. It was fun!’ It’s the same whether I remember the memory or not. I had perfected that smile and tone long ago. At some point, I just stopped looking for my memories, so I could save myself the excursion back into that blank space. The person usually smiles back. I always think theirs is genuine. They respond, ‘Yeah, it was fun. I wish we could go back. It was so much easier.’ And I’m forced to lie again. I nestle their recollection back into my brain in the space the real memory was meant to be, so if the topic reappears, next time I can recite their memory right back to them. It’s through these experiences where I’ve found that nostalgia isn’t always shared.
For me, it’s running into that blank wall trying to get through. It’s the constant lies to avoid strange looks and a whispered ‘are you ok?’ It’s fighting back tears because I struggle to remember anything positive from the last ten years, while everyone else talks about eras and fond memories. But then there are the things I do remember.
*
How many memories have I torn apart?
A majority of what I do remember is negative. It took a lot of thinking and sifting through both the blank void and the darkness to find anything that could be seen as positive. The fact that some memories began to glow through was surprising.
The memories that I did find were about sitting with my friends at lunch as they introduced me to their favourite YouTubers. Friendly rivalries between my primary school teachers. Playing cool maths games and watching movies on rainy days. Loom bands, Aquabeads, slime making, and many other arts and crafts that we made while huddled around a dining table. But I know that these memories are only positive because I make sure they are.
There is always a looming presence, a person, or a feeling, that I have to block out whenever I go back. A blurry figure, a wobbling shape, hoping to solidify so they can continue to plague me after years of running away. A silent reminder of how quickly everything had gone wrong. So, I tear them out and keep the fun. I keep the stories with my friends. I remove the negative emotions. I polish, and paint, and cover them again when reality begins to bleed through. Because it is bloody work when I build a new person out of the positive, while ignoring the negative that made me. I tried to make the perfect creature from my friend’s interests and traits, when all of mine abandoned me. All so when I can remember, it’s shiny and colourful, and exactly what I wanted it to be. I know others must feel this way as well. That they must cover the bad with the good, shining the bright light of nostalgia to obliterate the darkness in their memories.
Now, I know this is not how I should cope, but that person was created at a time when I didn’t know any better. I cannot go back and tear up that being piece by piece to reveal the original. They have been made, and now they exist. And they are me, or what I’ve accepted to be me over time.
I am the living creation of everything that was never made, that I am now making, that I had forgotten, and that I had reshaped. And because of this past, I have decided that if I cannot look back at the last few years and feel nostalgic for them, I will create that life right now. A life where in the future, I can look back and find joy. I will try to make this time, as shitty and complicated as it is and will be, a time when I can look people in the face and say that I remember, and that I miss it as well. While at the moment, nostalgia may be isolating, it doesn’t always have to be.
Author Bio
Hi, I’m Helen (they/them)! I’m following my passions as a third-year creative writing student at QUT. I love reading and writing fantasy, romance, and science fiction, as well as any kind of queer stories. I also love playing video games and watching games I cannot get (thank you, Switch 2) on YouTube, along with discussions of films and psychology.