Delving Deep Into The Human Mind is Like Trying To Navigate A Minefield

You never know what you will blow up in your face

Many many years ago I used to think that ‘ anal retentive’ meant a condition whereby somebody retained in their memory banks all the bad stuff that had ever happened to them in their entire lives. I was wrong.

Anal retention is a recognised psychological condition which leads somebody to be overly orderly and obsessed with the fine detail of just about everything. And this ties in very neatly with my use of the term in an article I published about how if you want to be a computer programmer, one essential quality is anal retention.

So what is it you call the condition of remembering all the shit from your past life ? Well it belongs to a condition called Hyperthymesia, which is basically a condition whereby you remember everything from the past, bad stuff and all. And it is a condition I have been blessed or cursed with pretty much all of my life.

I think in my case memories of the past are linked to some very strong life experiences. I can remember things from very early childhood, like drinking a plastic beaker of my own urine in a bet with another three year old out on the street. And these all too frequent, deeply impressive, experiences plague my mind to this day. Of course that could be a problem if I let it be so, but I try to be more positive about it and use that bank of memories as a writer’s resource.

One period of my life which was full of strong life experiences was my childhood. I envied normal kids who had the benefit of a positive experience of being brought up and educated.

As for me, by the age of fifteen I had been sexually abused by both a female member of my own family and by an older male neighbour. I had also had the living daylights beat out of me on a daily basis, at home, on the street or at school.

At my catholic secondary modern school we had teachers who were nothing more than deeply disturbed and frustrated psychopaths. There are one or two teachers who I remember in particular for the great pain they caused their charges with their sick minds.

We had a PE teacher called Mr Wallbanger who was evil personified. He had quite a few little party tricks in the gymnasium which were designed to cripple every single young boy as soon as possible so as to allow him to get back to his private little changing room to ‘read’ the latest copy of Razzle.

One of his evil schemes was to get all the boys to run in a tightly knit group around the gym walls. Wallbanger would stand in the middle of the gym and place one foot on top of a medicine ball so that he could pivot on his standing foot as he followed the jogging group around .

Then, when the the moment suited him he would unleash the medicine ball with great force, aiming this fifteen pound missile straight at the mingling of legs.

Of course, when that ball hit you it took the legs from right under you and left you sprawled in writhing pain on the gym floor with two suspected broken hips. In my case, I could not walk without a limp for three days.

The objective was to take every single young boy but one out of the running. The last boy standing was the winner. All but one of these young lads was almost crippled for life. Pure evil. Such was my secondary education. I sincerely hope Wallbanger had a happy, but short, retirement.

Now I could regale you with one story after another about this sort of nonsense that passed for an education, but I wouldn’t want to use up all my resources in one go. So a lot of that highly traumatising time will wait for another day.

Besides, when navigating the minefield that is the human mind, you never know what will blow up in your face.

Image of Sigmund Freud by Pixabay

There is still a great deal of my past that I have not explored, fearful of what I might come across. It is a little like peeling back layer after layer of an onion, not quite knowing whether what you may find is so awful it could blow up in your face and destroy you. Some things are better left well alone.

Sometimes when I recall those good old bad old days people say I have issues, that I need a psychologist like Freud to help me resolve those issues. I guess they are the kind of people who just sailed through school untouched by the evil that pervaded my formative years and what was deemed acceptable schooling. I’m happy for these people to have got through it all unscathed.

As for me, I’m as happy as a sandboy as I approach old age knowing full well the difference between a healthy young lifestyle with a good education and a prolonged campaign of terror by people who should not have been let within a mile of even a half decent human being.

To finally add a little balance to this journey into the mind and stay within the remit of what is Hyperthymesia, I do have a few happier memories. My escape from this deeply traumatic hell on earth childhood was football, music and writing. And to this very day I rejoice when Liverpool FC win anything. I also take great pleasure from listening to good music, from Beethoven to the Beatles. And of course, I absolutely adore creative writing. All three have been my salvation many a time, and they still are to this day