So this will be my last post of 2009, when the chapters will start anew under a new branch, January. Since New Year's is often a retrospective time, I thought an appropriate post would be concerning your psycho's memory.....or lackthereof.
One other madding behavior of these men are their incredibly poor memory. This is all apart of his games and “gas lighting“. You wonder if he is going crazy, if you are going crazy, and you search for logical reasons for his convenient amnesia concerning himself or you.
If he has a substance abuse problem, you find yourself rationalizing and blaming that for why it is he never seems to remember what he has said to you that has hurt you, argued with you or stories he’s told you. He will deny having said them, he won’t remember doing it, he will say it never happened, or, he will suggest that you have taken everything he said and took it out of context. You “read into” things, or you have taken bits and pieces of information he’s shared and came up with your own fictionalized version of reality. He in turn, will “remember” things that you don’t and that you know never happened.
I can assure you that I remember every moment that we were together, because when he finally gave in and wanted to see me and be with me, I jumped at the chance. There is another theory I have behind this memory issue. The more emotional a situation, for good or bad, the more people are apt to remember it. Since they have deprived us of much love and consideration, when they do pay attention to us, we remember the moments vividly. It leaves an emotional imprint. They on the other hand, are not emotional based about anything but themselves, which is why I believe that they don’t remember much of anything important to us. Just a theory.
In any event, I absorbed every moment like a sponge, in part to try and “figure this man out.”
Rarely, he would mention something that was so petty and trite that I was astounded that he could remember. To me, those times were proof positive that this man remembered far more than he led on, and was probably “recording” our times and conversations together with much better mental technology than me. While they like to make you think that they aren’t paying attention to you or really listening to much of what you say or do, they are in fact “studying” you, so they can figure out how to manipulate, control and find your hot buttons to push. With all this-you feel your sanity slipping as you wonder if you aren’t just being too Oliver Stone-ish with him, looking for and suspecting a conspiracy when there is none, or if you yourself isn’t the one that is suffering from paranoid delusions. As I've mentioned before, to an abusive person, the past is longer than 5 minutes ago and it is truly astounding how "convenient" their memories are. The "I forgot" is one of the most passive-aggressive tricks in the book, and it's difficult to argue. You can't "make" someone "remember." There aren't medications on the market to create the ability to remember, and while Fish Oil and Ginko are touted to be "memory boosters" or "memory helpers", try getting an abuser to even admit he has an issue with memory. To him, you are the one that is not recalling things properly. And of course, if you get angry with him for his shitty memory, then YOU are the jerk who is showing no compassion and hey, they "can't help it" if they are so distracted that they can't remember every little thing that you want them to. Of course not. They can only remember what suits them, and their own little hidden self-centered agendas. But you can count on the fact, they will never FORGET if you slight, hurt, or fuck them over in anyway. Memory loss, indeed.
art by Peter Saul
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