The Mind...

...is like a super computer with unlimited memory storage space. Everything a person has ever heard, seen, tasted, done is sent to the database. You may not remember what you ate for breakfast when you were three-years-old, what you ate for lunch when you were 12, or what you ate for dinner last Tuesday evening, but the mind knows. Too bad we do not have a Google search bar in our minds to instantly retrieve stuff from our memory database. The conscious mind forgets, the subconscious does not. It is all still in there, somewhere, lost like papers in a dusty cardboard box, behind the cobwebs in the corner of dark basement.

Alzheimer's disorder robs a person of the ability to bring memories to the surface or conscious mind. I think I read, as we age brain cells start dying causing memory loss. I also read and believe that moments in time that had  a lot of emotion surrounding them ~ either happy or sad or traumatic ~ are the easiest to remember. A certain song plays on the radio and you smile, not knowing why. If you dwell on it, you might remember that song was playing when your mother was braiding your hair. You might know instantly that the song was playing when the now love of your life gave you your first kiss.

Thus that "forgive and forget" advice is useless to me. How can we forget? It is stored forevermore in our brains database. Something can quickly bring forgotten memories to the surface. Such as when the word needle jumped into my mind. Aha, I have not forgotten nor forgiven the voices on the other end of the line (BC/BS Rhode Island) and the nurse whose mind was on the vacation he was starting the next day. Talk about a major case of paranoia ~ mine.

Am I giving those people free rent in my mind? I would not think so. Never occurred to me to forgive those people. Am I holding onto anger? Do not think so. There was no anger rising as the memory came back to mind. Nothing I can do about that past. I have wondered where I would be now if they had done their jobs properly back in 1998. Would I still have become homeless? Will never know what future I might have had. Just the way things are; the way my life turned out. No big deal.

I do get angry, however, when people start preaching their forgive and forget mantra. I am not angry at the drunk who ran a red light plowing into a family crossing the street, dragging the baby for miles in the vehicles wheel well. I am anger at people who say the mother needs to forgive and forget. How can she ever forget that day? Now or ever. The pain of her daughter being killed will ease given time. I think. But that memory is gonna be with her, in her mind, until the day she dies.