Amnesia

The mind is a tricky animal. I read somewhere that the heart understands. The heart is on your side. But the mind, the mind is dicey. It will go berserk in a second. It will mess you up bad, you will never know peace. 

Off late, I have been more unhinged than usual. After my son was born, things have been hard. My mind has been asking me to rebel, break free. It has systematically not allowed my heart to love. That apart, I have come to believe that amnesia is a part of post partum. Like, I wouldn't be able to recall which friend I spoke to last week, which sheets are in the laundry bag, what I had for lunch yesterday, whether I have been planning to call my mother or I have already called her in the past half an hour. So I seem to forget things more than usual. Sometimes I wonder if it's nature's coping mechanism to make me forget how hard being a mother is.

Since my short term memory is being wiped off as we speak, my repository of events to go back is taking me further behind. So I have had an average life, nothing out of the ordinary. Mostly, I have to try hard to remember if some event happened in 2016 or 2017. Everything before that is quite hazy. Hence I try not to remember anything in the first place. So it could be that my subconscious is digging further behind, or it could be the isolation and confinement at home for months, but suddenly memories of decades ago have started sprouting in my head.

I now remember, clear as day, incidents, painful episodes of sexual abuse that I was subjected to as a child. Perhaps, I had blocked them out completely because that's what the hippocampus does. As an act of self defense. But now, as I see my son erupt one milk teeth after another, I cannot help but roar in pain that when I was abused, I was so little that I too had my milk teeth. And yet, I can feel the day, the light, the time, the smells, the texture of the floor, the aridity in the air, the sighting of blood. It's like I am there. Immediately transported back to an hour in my life I didn't know I had lived through until a few months ago. 

And then my mind does its thing and connects the precendents and the consequences of the episode and everything comes back. Nothing is blocked anymore. I writhe in agony and wonder who would do that to a child as I nestle mine in my arms. But there's no escape. There's no forgetting. There's no getting past. There's no understanding. And I become a million scattered pieces of myself in the air.