Memory lane

My sincere apologies for ignoring you. My grandma died and I took some time off writing.

This week I had an interesting encounter. I spoke to a friend about my life.

There is much to discuss, but the reason for this post is I casually mentioned something was in fact, very wrong with me. I can no longer experience joy.

This has now been rigorously tested. I went back and read some of my writing from 2023 and I can no longer feel the love, the joy, the hope I felt back then.

What is now clear to me is that my memories as they stand now didn’t do justice to my feelings, the strength of them, the depth of them the heat of them, I wrote down 85% of my memories of Joe, I left out how good I felt, I had underestimated how good it was. But also how bad the rest of my life was. I lived in terror, that’s what kept me thin. Absolute terror. I look back at my photos and I can see how I either couldn’t smile at all or how my smile had changed. I took my butt to the GP 3 months ago. Have I taken a single antidepressant? No. So will my memories come back/get better whilst I am not on medication…also no.

Godspeed Beabea. Because the years of black are over, going forward we want to be able to walk down memory lane. Not be led blindly down it.

Grace and courage.

Annetta Mother-Smith