My husband and I were talking. He said that he thought he was a more happy-go-lucky person because he didn’t have the memory that I did. I think he might be right. When you don’t remember things, then you don’t ruminate on them. For a while, we considered that I had an eidetic memory, but I don’t think I do. I can’t remember things that way. I like to think I have an OCD memory.
An OCD memory is a concept I just made up, but I think it makes sense. With OCD, I tend to get stuck on a thought and start to obsess about it. That thought can stay with me for hours, days, and sometimes weeks and months. Sometimes it is about something really important and traumatic, but sometimes it is about something very trivial. Either way, whatever that thing is it says in my mind, and I think about it over and over again for a really long time. If anyone else did the same thing, they would remember the stuff I did too.
I remember when I was a little girl, and I was trying to memorize my multiplication tables. I know them now without think about them, but back then, I remember my mom had bought a record and we listened to it over and over again. The record said the tables and the more I listened to it, the more I remembered the multiplication. It wasn’t magic or my having a good memory. It was just repetition. That’s what having an OCD brain is like. Certain random things get played over and over again in my head and that repetition means they get stuck in my memory.
It’s funny; I wish I had an eidetic memory. It would have made school easier. It would have helped with my tendency towards dyslexia. Yet, I am just fine the way I am, except that I remember many things that most people don’t. Also, the traumatic events seem to be the ones that I obsess on because they were traumatic, and my mind tries to figure them out.
It’s not fun to look back on your life and the highlights are all the bad events. Yet that why I wrote about what I did yesterday. I think I should stop seeing my life as a series of events and single moments in time. It is more that just that. If I want to be that person God see, then I need to try to see myself the way God sees me. I need to look at myself at all times in my life and realize that the sum is so much more that all the moments.
And once again, it also helps to look at others the same way. People make mistakes. They do evil acts all the time, but God asks us to forgive and find love in our hearts for them. It is a really difficult thing to do, especially when I think about the worst people who have killed millions and made so many suffer. However, when I think about this paradigm of how to look at a person, then it is easier. A person isn’t just the evil acts that they do. There are so many more moments in their lives. Maybe the suffering they caused is unforgivable, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be shown the love of God.
My faith saved me. May God’s peace reside in all of our hearts.
