The Homework Never Ends Marking off my legacy of worldly deeds

Have You Tried Lying?

In a recent post, I bared my soul about one of the most traumatic events of my life. My motivation was to explore possible ways to leave it behind. I've read and seen fictional examples of forgiveness and letting trauma go (most recently while rewatching Dexter season 2 with friends).

The day after, though, a completely new idea came to me. See, I'd already considered the complicated beauty of the Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind solution (using technology to wipe memories right out of my brain). Now, I hate non-sequential-for-non-sequential's-sake movies and stopped watching Eternal Sunshine after a few minutes, but I enjoy the concept very much. Of course, it's technologically impossible, but if it was, I'm not even sure I would use it (or could afford it).

A silly idea occurred to me, which I promptly ignored. Then, during Cracked's Photoshop contest of the week, I saw the above book cover. It all sort of clicked together.

To help me in this endeavor, I have enlisted my friend to help me write the story of an afternoon replacing this other one, explaining it away as a simple nightmare.

me: had an idea for an experiment, need a partner

line: tell

me: okay so
I'm going to make up a plausible but fictional event that happened when I was fourteen or so
and it'll have a positive spin that sets me up to be a stronger person later in my life
i.e. an inspiring success

line: experimenting with memory modification slash autohypnosis?

me: bingo

line: fascinating but risky

me: I know

line: I wouldn't do it myself.

me: I read the synopsis for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
but eh, that was a shitty movie

line: ^^

me: and anyway, I'm not just putting in a new memory
I'm replacing an old traumatic one

line: .. interesting
form of repression?
I'm not sure if that can lead to good things.
looking up on wp

me: trying to think about possible outcomes
1) it just doesn't work and all I do is make up a nice story
2) it works and I have a happy memory with no negative effects
3) I convince myself of the new memory but also keep the old one
4) I convince myself of the new memory, forget the old one, but it leads me to some kind of symptom of repression
5) while attempting to erase the old memory, I induce a panic attack, in which case I have Eric here

line: 4 is the long-term riskiest

me: what are the symptoms of repression

line: "[...] there is evidence that people can indeed forget painful memories from the past, although it is also possible for them to underestimate the degree to which they actually remember the events.?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_repression

me: this is about involuntary

line: yes.
so basically as long as the result is neither illogical, self-destructive or antisocial, psychology has no beef with you
possible consequences may include: overcompensating, projecting

me: it has to be something that can't be disproven
i.e. if I mentioned it to the rents, they wouldn't say 'uh, that never happened'
so something that doesn't involve them (or not much)

line: well

me: one problem is that, as a kid, I was almost never away from them

line: the primary reason I wouldn't do it is because it violates the perceived integrity of my memory
which is crucial to my definition of myself.

me: this is definitely true
but
I'm not pleased with myself, the way I am
which I think is partly to blame on extremely traumatic memories

line: if you can actually do it, it may throw into doubt everything you remember
so it's a trade-off.

me: a Nny situation
living a lie and knowing it

line: yes
cognitive dissonance can be harmful

me: which is why it has to be something isolated
I'd say in order for the event to have a real positive impact on me, it has to involve people or a person
but other than my parents and brother, there weren't really any people in my life at that time

line: look, let me explain this briefly from my point of view.
there is such a thing as "brain configuration space"
that is, the universe of all possible states a brain can be in
you can visualize it as three-dimensional, even though it's really not.
your brain starts in the same area as other infants' brains
and the impressions you receive from your environment and your own processes
lead you on a path through that space
memories are the logbook of that path.
you're trying to rewrite your logbook and pretend to have arrived at a different location
but I'm afraid all that you'll get is a logbook with a discontinuity in it.
because everything that came after that fictional event will still be the same
the rest of your course won't have changed.
of course, I could be perfectly wrong.
oh, that's also why I don't agonize over my past
at any given point, I'm dealt a hand consisting of my path so far, a hand I have no control over. All I can do is decide where to go from that point.#

me: this is all conjecture, though

line: yes.

me: okay well, put it this way
I've put up a detailed account of the old memory on my site

line: log backup

me: if it comes down to it, point me to it and maybe walk me through de-hypnotizing myself

line: okay.

me: once I have a few clues, it should come back up in my head
heck, even if I succeed, this should be temporary

line: bending your lifeline
heavy stuff.
I hope it works.

me: more like bending myself

line: same thing
we are the sum of our experiences.

me: since I think this one event was the catalyst for a LOT of the negative things that happened to me between then and now
I can gloss over those in my memory if I can ignore this big original one

line: okay.

me: so what I need to do is come up with something positive
what I'm thinking is that I took a class somehow
since my parents often didn't care what I did during the day
so I took some of my money that I'd been saving and started looking around
and found a private writer's group, now defunct
not connected to the U of A
who were holding a six-week course of some kind for beginning writers

line: okay

me: say that it was in one of the small towns closer to where I lived
I had neighbors out in the mountains, albeit distant, whom I could get rides with if I had asked
say that it was the old lady who lived up the hill from us for a while
I went up and proposed this to her, since she went grocery shopping in that town every week anyway
once we had it settled, I'd tell the rents I was going out for a walk or something every week

line: yeah I remember you mentioning that

me: or I'd just take off, they'd likely not even notice

line: did those classes ever work out?

me: trying to remember
there was one day when Dad was going to buy a monitor and go grocery shopping
would have screwed up my plans
so I stayed home and let him and my brother go

line: so you never went there

me: then when the time came, I told Mom I was going to go find a fern in the woods or something
they grow in the mountains out there, saves money getting them at Walmart

line: so any memories of that time would be fake

me: these classes were during the summer, too
well yeah

line: you were pretty anxious at the time

me: I think I had a nightmare once about Dad screaming at me at walmart

line: you may have panicked and imagined something bad

me: which I guess is what would have happened if I'd gone
anyway, I went out and walked up the hill to the old lady's house

line: well it's a good thing you didn't then.

me: I was a little late so she was already in her truck

line: details
hook it on smells
sensorics besides sight

me: she had a white pony that she'd let graze in the yard
when she moved away we adopted it
she was named Shadow but at the time I called her Isa for some reason
I was into norse runes

line: n__n
haptics
feelings on your skin

me: I petted the horse on the way to her truck
I hate the smell of horse, though
so I rubbed my hand off afterward
got into the truck
it was clean because I'd cleaned it for her as part of my payment for the rides
we started down the bumpy road
once on The Beverly HIllbillies, Jed Clampett said that some people were being 'noisier than an empty pickup truck on a dirt road'
and it was so true

line: heee

me: this was the epitome of that, loud and bouncing and the whole truck shaking apart
I couldn't ever drive it because it was a stick
we got down to the place where her driveway met ours and then onto the main private drive
still a dirt road
all the way down to the mailboxes two miles away

line: what were you doing

me: then over a mile to where the pavement started

line: remember how you sat

me: I was checking that I had my notebooks
this was my second or third class in the set
so I already had some notes
was trying to remember my teacher's name

line: got your pens

me: the neighbor was Dana, by the way
forgot her last name
I used pencils

line: good

me: I like how they look and smell when they're fresh-sharpened
though nowadays I use pens
because they're smoother
I'd mostly noted down things about my classmates and teacher
to remember their names and what kind of projects they were working on

line: do you still have those notes?

me: I told them I had an idea about a book taking place in ancient Egypt (we all know how that turned out, thanks to this class)

line: did you throw them away?

me: they're in a big box of old notebooks at the barn, probably torn up by birds now

line: okay

me: Dana was asking me if I was liking the classes

line: they're probably not that important

me: I remember that if I didn't have to worry about the rents calling the police or forest rangers because I was missing, I'd be much happier at them
we got to the pavement and the ride became much smoother

line: can I make a suggestion

me: ?

line: you were maybe a bit tired that day and fell asleep for a bit in the car, had one of those bad dreams where you can't speak and can't move
Dana woke you up when you arrived?
It seemed so real at the time.
You can't really remember the specifics though.

me: something about Walmart
but yeah, just as we got to the pavement, the ride got smoother
I'd been helping Dad pick rocks out of the pasture all day
so I was aching all over
since this was my first time sitting down in a while and her truck was nice and cool and comfortable, I fell asleep with the radio on, listening to country music
and yeah, there was that nightmare about Walmart, I'd forgotten that it happened on the way, on the same day
all the words anyone said in it were warbly
like 'HURR BURR DEE BURR! >:('

line: You remember waking up from it, startled.

me: kind of comical now that I think of it
yeah, I realized we'd parked
we were in front of the high school gym where the classes were held

line: Do you recall your relief that it was just a dream?

me: Dana was sorting through her purse, making sure she had her list

line: Deep breaths.

me: well, in my first writing class, the teacher said to remember the details of events and dreams so you can use them in stories
it seemed really appropriate that I'd had a nightmare on the way to another class

line: Coincidences do happen.

me: so I made a note to write them down once I was sitting down and had my notebook out
I got my plan straight with Dana (that we'd meet at the grocery store down the block in an hour) and then headed into the gym
I remember feeling that same old flash of jealousy when I entered hte building
seeing all the lockers and chairs and into the doors of classrooms
but I didn't like the smell of people
like a sweaty slimy smell of a building where lots of people get crammed every day for years and years
so it was good and bad
I wasn't the only one going down the hall; a pair of old ladies arrived just after Dana and I and were coming down the hall behind me
there were a lot of older women in the class, there are a lot like them in this area
older church ladies or pagans who want to write either romance novels or their memoirs
but mostly bad poetry

line: /me smiles

me: ?

line: I know the kind.

me: you've got old people in your country, too? :D
there were a few high school students in the class, and I saw them up ahead going into the gym
now, I was a little nervous around the high school students
I felt like sort of an invader in their school
they didn't know I was homeschooled, but I figured it wasn't that hard to discern, since I wasn't a student there and there wasn't another high school for a long way
then again, high school students are supposedly stupid
but I was afraid of saying something like that to them
so I kept to myself around them
I got into the classroom and sat down close to the front, since my glasses were losing their focus (I got a new pair a few months later) and I wanted to be able to see what the teacher was writing on the whiteboard he'd propped up on a table
the teacher was bald, maybe forty-five, sort of scary-serious
but definitely knew what he was talking about

line: mh

me: I sat down and started writing down some notes from the nightmare
basically 'dad yelling'
I think I eventually used it in one of the Si books
like the bit where Anna's dad yells at her
only it was actually real to her, not a nightmare
which must have sucked

line: I remember using dreams for stories.
Our brain is very good at assigning meaning to random noise
but that's all it is; random noise and what's on your mind at the time.

me: was probably thinking about Dad going to Walmart and then heard random yelling on the radio
so I took down these notes and then waited another two minutes or so for the class to start
the teacher came out and started writing on the white board
I can't remember what that lesson was about
but I remember that it was good, basic stuff
like writing rules that I take for granted now

line: lessons you've internalized by now.

me: yeah
during the lesson, the teacher would go around getting ideas from people and then pick them apart
in sort of a serious but gentle way
like he wasn't making fun of you
just showing you how an idea for a scene or line could be even better
I didn't say anything because I didn't want anyone to really notice that I was there
since it might get back to the rents
when the class was over, everyone sort of went into informal clusters to talk about their ideas
I didn't know anyone there, so I didn't go and talk about stuff
later on in the lessons I spoke up some more, but at that time I wanted to leave early and meet up with Dana
walked down to the grocery store
the sun was going down and the hot air was finally getting cooler
she was actually waiting for me, reading a book in the front seat
the back of the truck was full of plastic grocery bags
so I got in and she asked how the lesson had gone
I think I told her about the things I had learned, all the way through the drive home
probably bored her out of her skull

line: n__n

me: we finally rattled up to the top of her driveway
I helped her haul her groceries inside
then I said good-night and walked down the hill in the near-dark
I knew the path so I wouldn't trip
when I came out of the woods, I saw that Dad's truck (might even have been the Blazer back then) wasn't back yet
which was fine with me, one less person to explain my walk to
I realized I didn't have a fern
so I got in and said I didn't want to get sweaty when it was so hot out
Mom laughed
went into my room and started going over my notes
I remember being glad that I was experiencing a 'class' and learning how ot take 'notes'
like I was a real student

line: that must have been good for you

me: then Dad got home and I went out to help unload groceries from the car
he was complaining about the guy he bought the monitor from, saying he just kept talking in one long incredibly unbroken sentence, moving from topic to topic, so that no one could interrupt him, it was really quite hypnotic

line: sounds like a good day.

me: yeah
http://homework.never-ends.net/?p=470

line: the existence of that post makes for slight cognitive dissonance
best of luck anyway.
I'd let it settle for a bit, sink into long-term memory.