I've never really been one to believe in reincarnation as I think most people define it: A soul passing through different phases of time in a new physical body. But sometimes I look back over my life an see how it could easily be divided into very distinct sections...never really overlapping. With that in mind, it's almost as though I've come through each phase as a completely different person in the same physical body. I'm really awful at putting my thoughts into words, but let me try to explain:
I currently feel like my life can be broken down like so:
Childhood: This is the period from birth until 12 years old.
Youth: 12-17 years old.
Adolescence: 17-21 years old.
The "Sam" phase: 21-31 years old.
My current position: 31-now.
Here's the thing that makes my life a little bit different from most people's: Most of the people in my life at different phases never carried over into the other phases with just a couple of exceptions. Long story short, there really isn't anybody that I actively keep in touch with in my life that was in my life when I was a child, a youth, an adolescent, or even really with Sam. I know that this will probably offend some of you, but the people that I hung out with when I was 20 weren't my friends when I was a kid and aren't my friends now (except for literally, like 5 of you...by some miracle, we've managed to keep in touch (even if it's a thumbs up or a like once a year) over all of these years and crazy life changes and I love Facebook for that). None of my former acquaintances were part of my life when I was married to Sam and now, the person I spent pretty much my entire 20's with isn't a part of my life either. Brian's never even met a single member of my family. Over the years, the social aspect of that hasn't really been that big of a deal (I'm a total loner), but I've begun to notice this affecting my memories and it's been bothering me.
I've always had a very active, vivid imagination. I was a kid that didn't want to fall into the hot lava or step on cracks in the sidewalk and I had an ongoing narration in my mind of everything happening around me. Everything is almost like part of a movie to me. Remember when I was in Northern Idaho listening to the freight trains and wishing that I could just jump on one? Not much has changed.
I really didn't have many childhood friends or close cousins or anything and kept myself entertained by playing outdoors and building forts and climbing trees. My brother is 7 years older than me so he was already in school by the time I came along so we just never had the same friends or interests and I just really don't remember having him around that much.
This is all fine and good except for the fact that I'm missing a lot of memories and I don't have anybody to reminisce with. I don't even have pictures. I don't have a single picture of myself from before the age of 22, no pictures of my parents or my family. I have a picture of String Lake from when I was probably 13 and a picture of my cat that I got when I was 11.
Back to the example of the freight train in Northern Idaho 2 years ago - I could smell the inside of the train car and feel it's vibration and the cold air around me as I bundled up to sleep on the rough wooden planks that made up the floor and I could feel the excitement of waking up in a new place and starting a new life where nobody knew me or judged me. See, that's a very vivid fantasy for me, but I didn't actually do it...I just pictured myself doing it. I'm finding that, 25 years later, I can't decipher actual events from my childhood from imaginary situations that I put myself in and I can't fact-check myself with other people. I can't remember if I actually hand-fed a deer while my dad was grilling Prime Rib over the Coleman stove on a camping trip with my grandparents when I was seven or if I just pictured myself hand-feeding a deer I saw while gazing out of the bunk window of our RV on a rainy afternoon, cuddled up in my sleeping bag with a Nancy Drew book while the adults played Pinochle. Either is entirely possible. The thing is, I can't call up my dad and ask him, "Hey, do you remember me ever hand-feeding a deer when we used to go camping in Coeur d'Alene?"
As far as I can tell, I had a pretty great childhood. I have a million really great memories, but I'm starting to wonder if they are actually based in fact. I had kind of a rough time when I went back to my hometown last summer and was immediately inundated with every single memory of my 23 years living there. It was really pretty overwhelming and I wasn't prepared for it. The saying goes, "Out of sight, out of mind" and after having been separated from that reality for 10 years, I thought that I'd moved on. But everything was almost exactly as I'd remembered it and everything reminded me of something that isn't a part of my life anymore.
Usually, I get most nostalgic when listening to music and the good thing about that is that I know that those memories are based in fact because they come flooding back to me in such detail and I can remember every single thing I was doing or saying or smelling when I heard that song. I touched on that a bit here : https://mountaintopsandflipflops.blogspot.com/2015/04/one-good-thing-about-music-when-it-hits.html Chuck Klosterman has an entire chapter in one of his books about nostalgia and if it's real or not...maybe that's what got me thinking about this whole thing. I know that we tend to idealize history...we look back fondly and only remember the good times, even if there were some really bad ones in there too. There are a few little stains on the mostly-white quilt that makes up my childhood, but for the most part, I look back fondly on that time in my life. Sometimes, I just wish I had somebody to share it with.
Usually, I get most nostalgic when listening to music and the good thing about that is that I know that those memories are based in fact because they come flooding back to me in such detail and I can remember every single thing I was doing or saying or smelling when I heard that song. I touched on that a bit here : https://mountaintopsandflipflops.blogspot.com/2015/04/one-good-thing-about-music-when-it-hits.html Chuck Klosterman has an entire chapter in one of his books about nostalgia and if it's real or not...maybe that's what got me thinking about this whole thing. I know that we tend to idealize history...we look back fondly and only remember the good times, even if there were some really bad ones in there too. There are a few little stains on the mostly-white quilt that makes up my childhood, but for the most part, I look back fondly on that time in my life. Sometimes, I just wish I had somebody to share it with.
Once my youth kicked in, the mostly white quilt started to look like a drop-cloth in an artist's studio. I'd been home schooled from 4th-6th grade and decided to start back in public school for 7th grade. My parents had sold my childhood home (the home in which I was born) in a historic part of town where I could ride my bike to piano lessons and my dad's office, get a chocolate malt on the corner after pulling weeds or painting our white picket fence (I'm not kidding), gather massive handfuls of fresh lilacs to place on the dresser in my pink and white bedroom, walk the neighbor's St. Bernard that happened to be one of the puppies in Beethoven's 2nd, work in the vegetable garden with my mom during the days and play croquet or badminton with my aunt and uncle in the evenings with the smell of laundry sheets and hamburgers drifting about, and hang out on the jungle gym of a park just the next block over. They'd built their dream home about 20 minutes away on a golf course and I started middle school in a new district without a single other kid I'd gone to school with before. Eventually, I got my driver's license and my first car and my first boyfriend and my first job(s). Things were moving along pretty smoothly until my mom got a hold of my diary.
I'm not really sure how to describe what happened there, but I'll just say that I either can't remember or just don't know what ever happened to that diary and I've never kept a diary ever since. This blog is as close as I get, but I don't really talk about deep stuff on here...it just helps me remember things like whether or not I'd actually hand-fed a deer while camping.
The thing is, without family or friends or pictures or a diary, I feel myself missing out on huge chunks of my life and it makes me really sad. I don't have anything tangible from my life pre-22, like a letter or a photograph, that is grounded in reality. I guess that I'll just keep writing things out and maybe as I continue through this phase of my life and listening to music, memories will be created and I can record them so I never wonder if they were real or not again.