Amnesia, false memories and a horrible secret

For the past weeks I have been experiencing flashbacks of past events, places and similar more and more frequently. As noted in earlier posts, it seems that whichever memory blocks existed before seem to be fading. So far the memories I have regained access to are centred around my teenage years, as well as the last years of the pre-teen years.

These flashbacks are pretty intense, causing me to briefly blank out, as a flood of primarily strong visual impressions threaten to overwhelm me.

Earlier today more than just a few memories came flooding back. This time it took me straight into some of my earliest memories, yet also back to a point with the strongest block. The impressions I can recall from that part of my youth are vague and fragmented, but carry a strong sense of... wrongness.

Yet as I try to push further into these memories, I find myself unable to. I can feel that there's something more there, but I cannot get a hold on these memories. All it leaves me with is a sense of pain, of tragedy and suffering. From talking with my mother I know that she isn't aware of anything that may have happened, but she did ask me whether something did happen to me as a child. Maybe someone knows. Maybe I do know, but just cannot recall it yet.


What's treacherous about amnesia is that your mind keeps making up memories based on shreds of information. Now that I'm remembering more and more coherent memories these false memories are becoming very apparent. Some are even in third-person perspective, which is frankly absurd. The sensation is the difference between looking at a stack of photographs, some burned almost to ash and others mostly intact or just charred. One gets the general impression of what is in the photograph, but it's a far cry from actually having those memories.

After such a massive number of memories surging back to me, I find myself quite disoriented. It will take time to reintegrate these memories, I guess. I'm also feeling somewhat afraid of what I may discover when - or if - these still blocked memories of my early childhood come back to me. Whether it's truly something traumatic that I experienced. Maybe related to the sexual abuse which my cousin suffered for years at the hands of her uncle and grandfather. Maybe something else. I don't know.


All that I remember at this point is that there's something horrible waiting for me. Something which made me feel upset and turned me quiet when I was only about six years old. Something which has affected me as an individual for most of my life now, even if I did not consciously realise it.

Maybe I do not want to ever remember it.


Maya