Recently, I read Marigold Mind Laundry. It's set to be a cozy healing fantasy, yet it poses an interesting question: "If you could, what memories would you choose to forget?". Honestly, I like having control of my life. As I cannot say how I would look like if I didn't remember certain things, regardless how unpleasant, I found this hard. However, there is one memory, I shall not go into, that I would choose to erase. It was horrible, cruel, and it only makes me unnecessarily afraid to get close to people0. Yet, it is isolated enough that I do not think I would lose any of myself in the process of forgetting. Everything else, how different would I be... I do not know. It brings into question what makes us who we are, and if it is our memories, but alas, I digress.
Funny thing is, we as humans do forget. Our brain purges memories constantly, we just have little say over what the memories we forget are. I personally remember very little from before I was 8, not because I wanted it to be so. Further, it is a well studied fact that stress affects how we store memories. Sometimes a memory has such a strong stress response that our brain suppresses or reconsolidates it differently, making it less accessible to conscious recall. While it may seem 'erased' from our perspective, these memories may continue to influence us in subtle ways even when we can't directly access them. And if you've ever pulled an all-nighter to study for a test, you may find those memories are actually lost forever.
To make matter worse, as time goes on, our memories get distorted, which in itself has many implications. So what about the rest of the memories that we did keep? How many of them are like they were when they were first recorded? Why did our brains choose some to keep and not others? Why do some memories affect us still while others are just water under the bridge?
There's an interesting study that, when we sleep, during the REM stage our brains have a process that disconnects the emotional response from the actual memory. If you are interested in further reading, I do recommend Why We Sleep which offers a very accessible introduction to the processes in the brain as we sleep1. So, as time goes on, a painful memory should become less painful. Now, this can sometimes go wrong. This is a common cause for PTSD and cPTSD, where the memory remains connected to the emotional/survival response. It would stand to reason that all the memories we would choose to forget, and we haven't, would be from this category, even if they haven't caused us a posttraumatic stress disorder.
There is increasingly positive evidence for EMDR as a treatment for PTSD. If that is the case the Marigold Mind Laundry is not something entirely fantastical. The therapy uses eye movement to disconnect the strong emotional response from the memory. Is it any surprise that it mimics the eye movement from REM sleep? Sometimes our mind needs a helping hand. What Jieun achieves by magic in the book, science has found a way to bring about in real life.
I would like to pose another question, what about when the memory of the bad event isn't what was causing the suffering in the first place, but the support that was missing is what did. According to Dr. Gabor Maté, "Trauma is what happens inside you as a result of what happened to you". He specifically states that "trauma is not the event that inflicted the wound. So, the trauma is not the sexual abuse, the trauma is not the war. Trauma is not the abandonment". He then further explains that "Trauma can be both when bad things happen to people that shouldn't happen. But also when good things that should happen, don't happen". The hurt is in the support we didn't receive. Often, it is not the act of being assaulted that causes the most pain, but the lack of support after the fact, sometimes combined with victim blaming... How can one erase what didn't happen?
Ultimately, support is believed to make the biggest difference when some people can adjust easily through a bad event while others cannot. Yes, we all wish the event didn't happen, but erasing the memory would not change that. So, maybe we didn't receive support then... but can we even imagine the support we would have needed to have received in order to quickly heal?
Painful memories can break us. But, slowly, we can begin to heal, with help from therapists, friends, and ourselves. What comes out can be a better version of ourselves. That is if we have the tools, and time to fix it. Otherwise, things just remain shattered. In some ways, I am stronger, in others I am weaker. There are things I only recently managed to repair, yet I know how they were broken over and over again as I was trying to repair them while being in the wrong environment. And yes, some got harder to repair, and there are pieces of me that I still have left that I don't even know where they go. The memory I would erase feels like it's added a piece to my puzzle that never belonged, that it melted and reshaped pieces of me into something unrecognisable... all in probably under an hour... probably less... So yes, forgetting would be an easy way out. Throw out the part of the problem that got a bit too complicated. If only... I begin to question if the pieces need to go back in the same place they came from. If what we get at the end is something beautiful and functional, does it matter it's not the same as it used to be? It won't be anyways.
I think the question shouldn't be "What memory would I erase?" but maybe "What memory should I make?". Ask "What is the cure we need to heal?". A doctor seeing you right after an injury may resolve in a simple cure, yet if left to fester the solution may become a lot more complicated. But there is still one, as long as we still live.
I would define the process as follows:
Say a memory makes me feel unable to relax in my own home. It won't be a question of forgetting about it, but proving to myself that I am allowed to relax in my own home over and over again until my mind believes it. I can think of other examples from the mild to the extreme, but this post would then need to come with trigger warnings.
Thinking of the memory I would like to erase, I think I know the type of experiences which would help me reduce the pain, and appreciate the happiness of a future where those experiences happen more. After all, I would not take them for granted. Will it be easy to find those experiences? I don't know, I haven't experienced them before after all... For some it is, others have said as much. But I will need to actively look for them. And some days when I am too tired, I won't. That's allowed too. Because what I might need right now may just be rest.
In doing this, we use the bad to build something better for ourselves. It may sound like I am saying that "everything happens for a reason". I don’t support that message. Some things are just terrible. They have no meaning. And they never should have happened to you. If we are to find meaning in anything, it should be in the future choices we make. Not the past and the events we could not control, but our own power and actions. The meaning we give ourselves is far more powerful than any fate we choose to imagine lead to this present.
If you're not going to romanticise your life, who will?3
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0 Which, ironically, would likely be the only way to heal the damage of that event.
1 While some specific claims in the book have sparked debate in the scientific community, its overview of sleep's role in emotional processing and memory consolidation remains valuable for understanding these complex mechanisms.
2 Whether that is through therapy, crying until you can cry no more or going into a forest to scream at the top of your lungs...
3 I say this as someone who moved to a new country on the 31st of December. “New Year, New Me, New Country”