By Yamila García

I often try to remember a particular event in my life and find that I can’t remember almost anything. I’ve been mulling this over for a while, and I finally think I’m understanding why I have these gaps in my memory. It’s not common for me to forget something, but in these specific cases, I can’t remember almost anything. What these events have in common, which creates a gap in my memory, is that they were all extremely stressful. I often ask myself: how was I able to give that presentation at school when I was a teenager? How was I able to speak in a meeting with so many people? How was I able to do that job interview or start that job where everything was new and everyone was extremely extroverted? And the reality is that I simply abstracted myself from reality and from myself. I have memories of seeing myself from outside myself, with that feeling of being outside the world, observing myself and others. The world is spinning, everyone is spinning with it, and my mind is out there floating somewhere while my body “seemed” to keep spinning like everyone else. That disconnection of body and mind has allowed me to pretend that I was functioning as expected, but it feels like I was never there, like I never spoke at that meeting, or went to that interview, or met those people… I don’t remember what I felt in those moments, how I went through them, what was going through my mind at that moment, because I wasn’t really there. 

 Over time, there are fewer and fewer gaps in my memory. Partly because I have advanced and grown in various areas of my life, and partly because I respect myself and no longer force certain things so much. I am no longer willing to do myself such harm that I need to dissociate in order to survive it. In any case, sometimes it is difficult to find a balance between pushing myself to go for more and respecting my limits. Sometimes those limits are not so clear, or perhaps my self-demand blurs them so I can continue going for more. 

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