Memories in our DNA

What memory causes you to feel a sudden shock of shame, embarrassment, mortification? Is it something that happened a year ago? Five years ago? Thirty years ago?

You are watching TV, driving home from work, at the beach, playing with the kids. The memory is nowhere on the horizon of your consciousness. And then…BAM! There it is. You can’t even pinpoint what triggered it, but there it is. You remember the scene, the setting, the time and place. You remember the objects. You remember the people, their faces, their expressions, what they said, their tones of voice.

But it is the feeling that you remember most vividly. The feeling that comes almost before the conscious memory. It’s twisting in your guts before you actually realize what it is you are remembering. Emotional memory lives in the guts, the intestines. They remember before you do.

You think about this memory. Not in a linear, coherent way. Instead of progressing from point A to point B to point C, the memory swirls around with you at the center. Time expands and contracts and it is impossible to put the events in order because they never happened the way you remember them. Not one person who was there would recall the event the same way you do. They wouldn’t even agree with each other. Eye witness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Too much depends on perspective.

The actual events that occurred do no matter. The memory of the feeling is all that matters.

You think about it for a period of time, while you are commuting or vacuuming or making dinner. And then someone cuts us off or the cord won’t extend any further for the vacuum or we are out of garlic and our consciousness shifts to more immediate concerns.

But it never goes away, the memory. It recedes into the murky depths of our subconscious; it contributes to our current feelings of anxiety and feeling inadequate.

“That was so long ago.”

But it isn’t.

When I was in the sixth grade I attended St. Jerome’s Catholic School in Weymouth, MA. The boys wore yellow dress shirts with navy blue clip on ties and navy blue pants. The girls wore plaid skirts and white shirts. They uniforms were cheap and looked terrible which was probably the point.

The cafeteria and the gym and the auditorium were all the same room and it smelled like sweat and bargain brand cheese pizza. It was repressed and oversexed and the teachers were sad and mean and bitter, especially the married ones.

But none of that is important to my memory because what I remember most vividly is that I forgot to get Christina Devoe a gift for Secret Santa. I forgot to get it the night before and all I could do was go to the corner store and get her a Twix before school.

I remember, so vividly, all the nice presents that the kids got each other. Some of them were even wrapped in beautiful paper with ribbons. I remember those so well because my Twix looked so much sadder and pathetic next to them

I got a box of gourmet chocolates from Joseph Randone, because he was a nice, thoughtful kid. A quality person.

I remember, so vividly, the look on Christina’s face. She was so disappointed. Moreover, she was embarrassed.

I remember, so vividly, the look on my classmates’ faces. They were embarrassed for her. Some were even consoling her.

They gave me mean looks. I remember that.

I remember, so vividly, the expression on our teacher’s face, shaking her head. Ms. Buckley looked like I had confirmed everything she thought about me.

I suppose I had.

We were sitting in groups and no one would talk to me. It went on all afternoon and I was in agony. I pretended to read a book but I could feel the looks.

I don’t remember if I cried or not but I felt like it.

I remember, so vividly, feeling cheap and nasty and low rent. Everyone really liked Christina because she was so nice and I had treated her very shabbily. Because I was just a shabby person.

That feeling has never really left me. I’ve always felt cheap and low rent. Never contributing my share, not knowing the best quality clothes to buy, the right gift to get someone, being a day late and a dollar short. Never deserving to be in a relationship with a person of quality because I am not a person of quality.

It’s in my DNA.