Down Memory Lane

Tennis, our sport of a lifetime. I still keep in touch with many of my junior rivals, hell, some I consider  my closest friends today. One of them in particular got himself an idea recently, to recreate this iconic junior tennis photo from our New England playing days. taking it upon himself to order us some adult-sized shirts to make it all happen. Plans are in the works. Always love reconnecting with my old buds, sharing war stories from back in the day.

The long journey back to childhood. I'm part geologist, part archeologist, exploring the strata of memory. The mind and its gigs of storage. Many of the memories are pleasant, innocuous, gentle. Others lay safely inert playing no meaningful role in my life today. But others, thought safely stored deep within my psyche, still remain active, radioactive even, though muted some, memories, like radiation, have their half lives. But I find our mind's selective memory fascinating. Memories I haven't thought of in decades, memories I likely would never have recalled yet for a picture, still possess the power to trigger behavior in me today.

I look at that picture. The top line data is harmless The people, my first real friends. The place, my first National junior tennis tournament, yet the action, a recurring trauma event for me and my Dad, my competing at junior tennis tournaments. Its where it all began to go wrong.

Paraphrasing Maya Angelou. I don't recall what was said, I don't recall what was done, but I'll never forget how it made me feel. I remember playing poorly, I remember getting beat, I remember crying while I played, crying not because I was playing poorly and losing but crying  for how I was going to be treated for playing poorly and losing. Even today, if I start playing badly, if I start losing badly, those same feelings return. But today there are no tears, its a rage that swells. Spontaneous, irrational, veering toward out of control if not managed. All fueled from past memories. A permanent virus in my operating system. Being mistreated by someone you fiercely loved just hits different.

And try as I might, as I grew up, I did everything in my power to not be like him. Yet a part of me is. He's hardwired into me. I think like him. My speech cadence is his. My mannerisms too. I frame phrases in my mind, they sound just like him,  If you only knew the mental energy expended in not acting like he did, in not treating others like he treated my brothers and I. Yet I hear him in me. When agitated, stressed, scared, out of sorts, I channel him, yet I keep it to myself, Its a curse I'll likely never shake, though there's solace in knowing what's gets said in my mind doesn't come out of my mouth...most of the time.

So when I see pictures from the past, I look back with caution. Its like viewing a painting. Perspective is everything. Stand too far away, you miss the crisp detail, look too closely, you miss the bigger picture, distracted by the smudges, imperfections, and mistakes of the artist's creation, as well as our own. Maybe some things are not meant to be looked at too closely. The longer I look back, the deeper I look, observations build, events reform, feelings re-emerge. I've been down this memory lane before, I know where this can go and I don't want to go there anymore. I begin to pivot, back to the here, back to the now. I've trained myself well. Its OK to look back back, just don't stare.

Us growing up in the 70's. Our fate was to be different than our folks. Life was to be easier for us, our nation at peace, our parents prudent and prosperous. Like most parents, mine wanted more for me and my siblings than they had themselves. So we were blessed with the gift of choice, with opportunities galore, opportunities past generations couldn't even dream. And as the dust settled on my various pathways, my  adolescence was to be defined by the youth tennis experience.

In many ways, our generation were accidental test subjects. Accidental in that nobody really had any idea what they were doing or that there was even anything to be concerned with. We weren't being drafted, world wars and depressions were safely in the past. Our lives centered around playing a game. But that game turned out to be so much more than the physical. It became about our inner lives. Who knew the affects on adolescent development when one's formative years were spent chasing a fuzzy yellow ball .

It was such a unique way to grow up, a family's energy and resources and focus all directed at a child, the prodigal one, the return on that investment residing in the cash and prizes of future greatness. We were all in, future champions were in our draws, across the net, down the hall, why could it not have been us.   Knowing what I know now, it was all destined to fail. Starting at the top, we lacked a master plan, the pieces were never in place. Yet there was no plan B for failure. We were overly invested in an outcome, it was prosper or perish. the only acceptable  result that moment of coronation that for so many of us never came.

So I look back on those time. So innocent, so unaware.  Could I have ever imagined how my life would turn out? All the cunning in self-preservation. My brain new. It looked out for me. When the rage would surge, it would alter my state. Some mania, some depression, some addiction, some obsession. Anything to protect me from the rage. 

How much of our lives is at the mercy of memories mostly forgotten. And why do some have more sway over our behaviors than others? What triggers them? The mysteries of the mind. Sometimes it just goes there. Yet I need not attach today. I take a ride on the Emotions Wheel, I don't get off til it lands on Grateful. It simply must. I can live no other way.

We see the world not as it is but as we are, Our ever shifting present colors the past, our childhood. Look at it wrong, it can seem post war apocalyptic, but only if that's the prism through which I view.  So I spin the emotion wheel again, around and around it goes and goes. And I just watch it spin, for too much time has passed, there is no right or wrong and it was never black and white. the contortions of the mind, leading to non-conclusions for no resolution can be found, yet the wheel keeps spinning, I think this time I'll get off on acceptance, a hard fought acceptance that needs to keep being won, a precarious balancing act of honesty, denial, selective memory and survival. 

Memories of the way we were. Memories forming the way we are. 

The cunning of it all..