Memories Are Reconstructions

In one of the chapters in The Handmaid’s Tale, the main character is reminiscing.

“This is a reconstruction. All of it is a reconstruction. It’s a reconstruction now, in my head, as I lie flat on my single bed rehearsing what I should or shouldn’t have said, what I should or shouldn’t have done, how I should have played it. If I ever get out of here..Let’s stop there. I intend to get out.”

I think about this quote often when I start to ruminate on my past. I think about how the thoughts that I’m thinking about aren’t the exact thought that I thought (huh?). It’s like taking a measurement with a scale. Is my weight 145lb? Or 145.01lb? Or 144.99lb? The measurement that I get is only as accurate as the measurement device, and even then there is uncertainty.

And so, when I think about my past, my brain is taking a measurement of my experience, where my experience itself is a measurement of existing in the world. It is not possible to perfectly reconstruct feelings, thoughts, and experiences. We can only attempt to put those pieces together. We want go to a place that doesn’t exist, in a time we can no longer come back to. Memory is a fickle thing.

Sometimes I think about the circumstances that pushed me out of my parents house. Was it really that miserable? I think hard about it, and it couldn’t have been that bad right? I missed my parents and brother for the first two weeks. I wasn’t alone because i had my girlfriend, but I felt lonely. It was like I lost them even though they were only half an hour away. Rather, it was like I lost that piece of my life – like that chapter in my life is inextricably closed forever.

Time scares me. Sometimes, I think about growing up in that house and feel overwhelmed. I can never fix my mistakes or say what needed to be said. I can never be honest with them and try to fix the family. I can never go back to that place as it once was, made of sweetness and anger.

I’ve been back to my parent’s house. I don’t quite feel like a stranger, but I also don’t feel like I belong. I stand in my room and think about the me that used to inhabit this place. The me that spent the last 20 years growing up in this place. The me that was so unhappy in the dysfunction of that house that I had to leave. I also think about the me that was dying laughing with my brother playing video games. I think about the tender moments with my mom and dad. I think about my 18th birthday and high school graduation celebration when all my friends and family came over. And most of all, I think about my parents growing older. I feel bitter because, even though I think I’m grown up, I still feel like a petulant child who’s feelings got hurt and will hold a grudge until it’s too late.

Home brings out a certain softness in me. But at the same time, it hardens my heart because I know I made the right decision to choose myself for the first time in my life.