yobech505

The Memory Jar

I always had the inkling thing; memories, or so I pensively implied to myself, eventually went to their place and just kind of hung out there,  undisturbed, at least until you wanted it.  They were dropped into this jar that hides in the cerebrum somewhere, lid on so tight that it could only be removed with so much effort that towels from a drawer had to be used to wrangle it off.  I was safe from their impact, and the effects of what they were didn’t cause stir, or any kind of miscues to memory cells.

Didn’t figure the lid would come lose on it’s own.

Yep.  finagled it clean off, then misplaced it.  Not planned, but despite caution overdone, it occurred just the same.  And the content was laid out all over the area, bouncing off spots I was sure I had scrubbed thoroughly, leaving residue I was sure I had unremembered.

Slim kind of fat chance on that one.  I remembered, with a sort of impeccable vengeance. New things got pushed into muffled corners and old ones scattered about, taking charge with an abandon that makes reckless seem like a clawless and mellow stuffed toy kitten.

It’s not a ‘keep you tossing, going from blanket to sheet and back to blanket, then nothing, all night’, kind of memory.  It won’t be a stress revitalizer, or even a big mood changer,  but it did refresh the cells that playback that kind of stuff.  And it did peak a sense of what once was but isn’t any more.  The ‘sadness’ thing, I suppose.

I could try to back myself off, excuse myself from the feelings.  It would be futility, only a token attempt to allow myself to tell it, “I’m bigger than you,” which would be a fraudulent fib from my ego to my id, which both have tried playing before.

So here she was, on a day like it seemed she had never left.  But I needed her, not for myself, as least in the way that things once sauntered about, but for other reasons unrelated to the ‘used to be’ mode.  And here I was, in ‘behind the stone wall’ defensive mode, cool, aloof, in control of the situation.

Yeah, Right. Surface toast.  The burnt slices are underneath, their charcoal sides invisible to all.

Survival is not an option choice on the list of menued items.  It just is.  And I’m good at it.  After all, I’ve had scads of practice.  So I survive the encounter, and will eventually emerge without even a micro scar.  But I so underpredicted the inner ability of the event to remove the lid.  It popped off.  Easily.  And it allowed so much to break free from the leash, that I was, if not many more things, dumbfounded.

We all want what is best for others, especially those whom we love.  But we all need what is best for ourselves, which is just as hard, if not harder, to reconnoiter and acquire.  The problem that tends to attach itself to that, is that we don’t have a safe enough place to store it when things change.  No container is unopenable, just as no heart is immune to breakage.

I’m not sinking.  The training I’ve put the mind through the last time is keeping the ocean from busting through the waterproof doors.  Memories that kept me awake don’t.  Dreams that sent me off in distracted directions are dormant.  Gradually, the area will be resheveled  and the jar will be refilled and placed back into the nook that was built for it.  Maybe this time it will have some extra tape around the lid.  Won’t keep it shut, though, even if, in the most distant depths of me, I really wanted it to.