Introversion & Memory

[britpoptarts]

I didn't want to go on the trip with these kids, but I felt torn between my awareness that I was being too antisocial (as usual) and earning a figurative gold star on my college applications as a useful member of this particular school club. I lived a lot in my head as a teen. My home life was adrift and full of conflicting messages ever since my

Comments

[rabidgod]

3. I got WAY too excited over chipmunks. They were everywhere, and I was charmed. My peers thought I was retarded, gooning over striped rodents.

hahahahahaha

[britpoptarts]

Chipmunks are awesome. :)

[rabidgod]

I remember when I went to the zoo a few years ago, there was a chipmunk running around on the path and I was freaking out and following it. But then it went away. :(

[black_and_bloom]

I've been struggling with recovering memories too.

I went on that same yearbook trip, in 10th grade, but it was a West Georgia College in Carrollton. I remember having to room with a girl, now a reverend, in a grade above me, because she ended up being the odd man out among her friends. I remember VERY LITTLE else about that trip, except being amazed at how every single other person was from metro Atlanta, and seeing a KKK rally on the drive up in the school van.

[britpoptarts]

It is perhaps signifigant how much I DO remember about a senior trip to London...because I kept a little journal

[black_and_bloom]

I (deliberately) missed the senior trip to London, as well as our lovely post-grad cruise. The truth was, as appealing as London was to me, I couldn't face going with our classmates. The social stress of it all would have overshadowed any enjoyment out of what would have been my first trip to Europe

[britpoptarts]

I don't remember the cruise option. I suspect I rejected it either due to finances (we were poor, frankly) or due to getting a case of the heebie-jeebies at the idea of being trapped on a boat with people who had the capacity to casually do and say cruel, ignorant, mean or rude things. Most of them didn't MEAN them that way, and I was also a bit prone to hypersensitivity. Would not have made it more bearable.

I don't know that I much understood myself, frankly, though I was working on figuring out what made me so weird or different or however you want to describe it.

The music trick doesn't usually work for me, because I still listen to a lot of stuff from high school. No era-specific memories are formed if you never quite stop listening to the same stuff...new stuff just overwrites or coexists with old stuff.

I like Bill, too. My mom still keeps in touch with lots of SCD teachers (mostly lower school ones).

[mitchellxl5]

This is all very interesting, obviously because of our commonality in high school experience, locale, etc. It reminds me of something Philip Levy said to me years and years ago. Even in my 20s, I complained that I actually didn't remember a lot of detail about the high school years except for certain telling things here and there and I wondered why. He said it was because nothing really interested me that much, I wasn't very engaged by stuff so I wasn't really paying attention well

part 1

[britpoptarts]

My sketchiness seems to inversely proportional to the number of relics on hand available to stir my memory. If I kept a record, I remember, in excruciating detail, a whole host of things about an event, even if the details aren't specifically visual or verbal. If I merely observed or contemplated, or was getting news about an event second-hand, I probably will have to be nudged to remember things. So I remember sketching Dena in shades of blue and green pastels (because that was what was on the table in front of us), and discussing music with you and Philip and his brother now and again, and other transitory things like that, perhaps because we were fairly often doing such things (doing art projects that weren't assigned, or talking about books or music, or goofing off). As such, I was interested (validating Philip's theory that when we were bored, we tuned out) and also actively involved and doing something and interacting (thus underscoring my suspicion that, because I tended to be very quiet and "thinky" and observant without

part 2

[britpoptarts]

ETA: This was more of a blog entry than a comment. Will repost it that way. :)

Re: part 1

[mitchellxl5]

In my experience, the difference between situational depression and chemical depression is exactly that - situational depression has a chance to go away, even without treatment, while chemical depression never goes away and is a chronic condition that you have to manage throughout your life. My personal experience is that chronic depression is more of a stretched-out extreme lethargy, which results in little personal productivity and really bad social interaction. The extreme clinical depression comes now and again and in this way it is a delightful combination of situational and chemical, with all the self-destruction and falling apart that makes it so enjoyable. When you struggle with both, I guess, you are starting off at a lower bar than a "normal" person, so the sinking down isn't as different from your usual demeanor as it would be for some others. Some people, it's pretty obvious when they're clinically depressed but others, sheesh, it's hard to tell