I want to write about my past, and it makes sense to start at the beginning, simply because that’s where it began. The problem is that most of what I remember is a series of loose facts, such as living there, being with those people, having that job, and whether it was enjoyable or not, or something in between. I can remember what my old room looked like, mostly because I have seen that one picture of the room from time to time, it’s just the picture I remember holding in my hands if I’m honest. I actually don’t know what it is to remember in the sense of reliving it in my mind. 

What I know of the time from before I moved out of my parents’ house is almost nothing. I can string together a story, I remember the story of my youth. I can point to the tree I climbed when I was 11, and looking down from that vantage point for the first time feels like it is etched in my memory, like what vertigo feels like whenever I experience it now. I remember feeling vertigo in that tree, and more than 30 years later, when standing on a 10-story-high balcony. I recall many strong emotions, and they are often associated with a specific place. However, the feelings are real, but I have no certainty that the locations are correct. 

After I moved out, the story became richer, perhaps because I had finally started living my own life, and the vacation was over. The steps I took now, I did for the first time on my own; I paid attention to where I was going. However, as I mentioned earlier, I am a skeptic and don’t entirely trust my own memories, except for the basic facts that I have lived in different places, attended various schools, and held other jobs. Later experiences now taint most of the feelings that accompanied them, and my feelings about specific events have also evolved over the years. I also believe that if you are currently experiencing strong emotions, such as a breakup, you should recognize that you are the last one to have an objective assessment of what is happening. It often takes time to acknowledge that the strong feelings were, for the most part, an exaggeration and a reflection of how the world around you expects that you should react, how your background taught you what an appropriate memory should look like.