What a rough start to the year, eh?! With clueless leaders becoming more adept at fabricating truth (widespread COVID19 testing, anyone?), I figured I should turn off the news and focus on where I fall short in my writing. Right now, it appears to be my memory.
The older I get, the more I realize how fallible memory is. At the start of the year, I began rethinking Pennebaker’s prescription for writing through trauma. I embarked on a reported essay where I made a case for writing from a positive place — homing in on the sweet stuff after the loss of a loved one (to be published in Unity Magazine next year).
At first, I really struggled with this. I couldn’t remember specific experiences or events. And when I was able to recall a memory, it was foggy — like a blank slate with only the faintest hint of faded chalk. In one case, I unknowingly fabricated an entire experience.
I wrote about flying to Boston with my dad to secure an apartment before my graduate school career began. I detailed how we ate at the pub across from the cemetery where Paul Revere was buried, how my dad slurped oysters on the half shell at Legal Seafoods, and how I tagged along with him to various business meetings.
After free-associating from memory, I looked over my journal entries from 1995 and discovered, to my horror, that my dad wasn’t even there. Apparently, completely fabricating stories isn’t uncommon. The human mind integrates and combines different memories to preserve real estate. As a result, memories come back hazy, incomplete, or even created from our imaginations.
Memory and Trauma
It turns out memory isn’t only fallible when it comes to grief and loss, but also when processing trauma. Often times, the mind leaves the body when we’re scared or threatened.
During my sophomore year of college, the “he said, she said” shenanigans happened to me with an on-again, off-again boyfriend. We’ll call him Pete.
Both drunk from too many shots, Pete and I stumbled back to his off-campus apartment. I smelled the pepperoni from the cold pizza congealing on the stovetop, booze oozing from his pores and cigarette smoke in my hair and on his breath. Then, he nudged me to my knees and demanded … well, let’s just say he was trying to force me to do something I didn’t want to do.
I wrote about the experience under a pen name and, in a dubious move, sent him a link to the story. I wanted him to know how that night affected me. He called immediately.
While we both agreed, it wasn’t straight out abuse, just coercion, our recollections of the encounter were completely different. I remember him pushing me to my knees in the living room off the kitchen. Pete remembered that night, too, but in his memory, we were in a bed with grey sheets.
“What you described as a ‘nudge’ is even more superlative than what I remember happening — and we were lying on the bed together, not standing up as you wrote,” he said.
I’m not convinced my version of events that night is right. I don’t believe his is either. The only way to access the real truth would be to ask the fly circling around that stale pizza (assuming said fly could talk!). Even more important, these details don’t make a difference in terms of my ensuing pain and heartache, but they do raise important questions for our ability to accurately encode and process information.
There’s research — and hard proof via the hundreds of people with multiple personality disorder — that the human mind is designed to exit during trauma. It’s an evolutionary defense mechanism. We’re better equipped to survive if we escape the situation, even if only in our minds. Add alcohol to the mix, with an entirely separate hit to the hippocampus (the memory center of the brain), and encoding information correctly becomes an impossibility.
Could it be then, that the picture we encode during trauma — or during the adrenaline-rush of an aggressive pursuit — is incomplete? Could the hormones and chemicals swirling around the mind during that time quite literally color the truth? Viewed from that lens, every story has at least three sides: Person A’s, Person B’s, and the truth.
Truth in the Retelling
As personal essay writers, truth is at the cornerstone of our work. But accessing the truth from our memories can also be a huge hurdle — especially for writers who aren’t keen on journaling. One way you can overcome a faulty memory is with a sort of disclaimer. Something like “I imagine I replied with INSERT IMAGINED OR PLAUSIBLE reply.”
In an essay about being sexually abused as a child, I say a 5-year-old’s memory is completely incomplete. Other writers use dialogue with a qualifier, something like “my mom likely responded,” or “I imagine her reply was something like …”
These qualifiers provide the gist of a conversation in dialogue form. It isn’t outright fiction, but it does let the reader know that you’re not 100% sure of certain details.
Even in positive, feel-good stories, truth can be messy. My son, Max, has detailed memories of my dad playing with him in the pool. In these memories, my dad playfully hurled his 3-year-old body from the shallow end to the deep end as if he were tossing a baseball. The thing is, when my dad was alive, Max didn’t know how to swim. Max remembers it though, so to him, it’s accurate.
I’m not sure how to reconcile these inconsistencies. The key for me has always been to share my truth as I remember it – and to be transparent when I’m not sure.
Want to explore more about how to be truthful on the page? I share several tips, suggestions and prompts in all of my courses. My next ALUMNI ESSAY WRITING CLASS, which begins on June 1st, is already filling up. Email me at amy@amypaturel.com and mention this newsletter, and you’ll get $20 off the cost of admission. I also offer one-on-one coaching and one-off critiques year-round.
I hope to “see” you in some capacity soon. In the meantime, happy writing — and reading!
a