If You Could, Would You Erase Painful Memories?

A poem and reflection

Memories & Retrospection

Outwardly luminous, impossible to grasp. Impaired perception filtered your dancing shadows. Komorebi feeling dappled through my mind, embellishing features from a source already shallowed.

Your shiny armor blocked everything out except for disdain and derision. No way to weather the unexpected drought or to prevent naive oblivion.

A tiny tot driven by love yet lost in translation, chasing the glitters of fake gold, and wanting to be liked, to be loved, to belong. Inner beauty buried six feet under alienation.

Painful cacophony echoed in memory lane, shriveling my inner self and reflection. The culprit of their outer expression? Just their wounds crying in the face of pain, emerging through tsunami waves of deflection.

Would I want, if I could, wipe out the noisy laughs, sarcastic smirks, eye rolls, and yawns, and replace it with gentle ways, sincere smiles, the antithesis of primal instinct pawns?

I’ve chosen not to erase the memories, but my interpretation as wiping out the scars would have forfeited the lesson. For I no longer judge myself through someone else’s eyes. I no longer crave external validation.

Today, I make peace with the memories in my mind, diving into the silent waters of inner observation. Today, I make peace with who and what I am. No longer pain, but inner knowing informs retrospection.

This poem is about memories from childhood. I was bullied as a child, and this resulted in low self-esteem.

Yet, looking back, I wouldn’t erase, if I could, the memories and the pain brought about by such experiences. Instead, I’d erase the meaning I gave to such events.

In a nutshell, I’d erase my interpretation that I was broken and not worthy of love, respect, and compassion and replace it with self-love.

Why?

We are not prisoners of our circumstances but of our interpretations.

If I hadn’t experienced bullying, I would not have learned an important lesson.

Your Value does not decrease based on someone’s inability to see your worth.

— Unknown

In other words, I have changed my interpretation and no longer let someone else define my worth.

Furthermore, through personal development, I have learned that people become toxic from an inability to heal their wounds, so they always take it out on others.

Hurt people, hurt people. That’s how pain patterns get passed on, generation after generation after generation.

— Yehuda Berg

However, it isn’t our responsibility to ‘fix or save’ someone else. Our responsibility is only towards us and our children.

Am I fully healed?

Healing is a journey and a cyclical process.

In other words, I’m continually peeling layers of pain, indoctrination, and past trauma. This process constantly informs my feelings, thoughts, and actions, enabling me to grow and transform my old identity through better choices.

Sometimes, it’s easier to realize healing has occurred when a new situation arises where we can identify the red flags early on and prevent ourselves from getting entangled in an old trigger or pattern.

It is vital to our healing process to recognize when we need help. If painful memories torment us, we need to seek help without delay.

I wrote the poem above, inspired by Ruby Noir 😈 September writing prompt # 11: Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

This prompt asks, ‘Would your life be better if there was a way to erase specific memories, events, people, or thoughts from it entirely? What would you erase if this were possible? What do you think would change?’

Please see the original post below if you want to participate in Ruby’s writing prompts.

© 09.15.2023, Carolina Smith. All Rights Reserved.

Thank you for reading!

∼ In Lak’ech.

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