“I had seven faces
Thought I knew which one to wear
But I’m sick of spending these lonely nights
Training myself not to care…” -Interpol
I’ve been thinking about this topic of memory quite a bit lately and have been trying to write about it, but I keep veering off and running into problems. Deleting, rewriting… This morning I realized that maybe the issue is that I’m focused on memory, but the real core of what I’ve been thinking about is something else entirely. So, I will get to that shortly.
When I was younger, I had this intense ability to remember vast swaths of things. It wasn’t a photographic memory or the cannot-forget-a-single-thing sort of memory that some folks have. It was often arbitrary in selecting what I would retain. There were times I would sit at the bottom of the basement stairs, trying desperately to recall what I had been sent to fetch, and terrified to return to my mother admitting I had forgotten so soon. But then I’d meet someone once and remember their name, their clothes, their words for years after.
My memory was atypical enough to be one factor in my elementary school deciding I should be tested for autism. I learned to read well before my peers, and, though I’ve always been bookish, I hated school. I struggled under the regime of forced repetition — hungering instead for new information. I could quote conversations verbatim, sing albums worth of lyrics, hold my own in literary conversations, and pull from a seemingly endless catalogue of random facts I’d learned about the world around me. My interests tended much older than my age. I did not fit in.
I believe I was 5 years old when my parents divorced and my mom got married to The Enemy. This drastic life change brought with it an unending trail of consequences. One pertinent to the topic at hand was the shift from a home full of music and literature and the joy of learning … to a TV-centric, right-wing political-religious, authoritarian environment.
It gradually became apparent that the Evil Patriarch was not a fan of strong-willed, intelligent women. I learned, over time, that it was safer to hide my brain… safer still to just not know things. I couldn’t always bury that part of me, as I was never willing to put books aside (and try as I might, I can never fully hide my sass). But, looking back I can see the impact it had on my educational development.
“…It’s up to me now, turn on the bright lights…” –Interpol
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