Betrothed? Intended, FH? The Boy? I'm still not sure what blog name the Fianc gets (read, Fee-ahnc). I'll figure it out eventually.
Tonight's blog is brought to you by the combined effects of day-quill, my sinus infection and the food coma that is the result of the insanely delicious yellow curry that I had for dinner. Subsequently, because of it's deliciousness and the length of time that has passed since the last time that I've been able to get a hold of it, I ate WAY TOO MUCH FOOD.
I had an interesting experience tonight, that I'll try to put into words; a disclaimer to this is that I have little faith in how successful I'll be on fully conveying my thoughts.
I'm fully convinced that memory is made up of so much more than images, there are emotions, locations, sounds and smells that go into creating the fully comprehensive recalled notion. Oddly enough, scent is one of my strongest triggers when it comes to memory. Once, when I was 12 I leaned over to say hello to a neighbor's baby in their stroller, and caught an aroma that fired through my synapses to dredge up a five year old memory. Leaning closer, I took a strong sniff of the upholstery of padded stroller, and exclaimed, "I know that smell!" When stood up I noticed that my mother and the neighbor had broken off their conversation to stare at me with odd expressions. "It smells like the Hurst's house! Our neighbors from New York!" This didn't seem to clear up any confusion for the neighbor, and my mother awkwardly tried to tell her, "Miranda has a bit of a thing for smells...." The odd part about the whole thing is that I hadn't stepped inside the Hurst's house in about 5 years.
Flashing to the present, I was sitting at my dining room table tonight, after just finishing my fabulous dinner, and was reading a wedding blog when I was struck internally by that feeling of remembering - not of de ja vue, but just of knowing that something that had just occurred had triggered a memory that I couldn't quite reach yet. I sat perfectly still, trying to feel everything around me, and rereading the same sentence over and over, trying to place this feeling of familiarity. I knew that it wasn't coming specifically from the blog I was reading, especially considering 'wedding' things were fairly new to me, and these memory triggers tend to be more distant past.
As I let everything around me sink in, I suddenly had a picture in my head of me, sitting in my grad school apartment, at the small eating table. I knew this was a specific memory, because I ate at that table rarely - I usually ate by necessity at my coffee table because my eating table became a catch-all for all the detritus that often followed me home from the office or class or the library. So, I was sitting in my fully cleaned apartment, and I'd just finished dinner. I was sitting with my laptop open on the table, combing through websites for pleasure (not that pleasure) as opposed to thesis and research web sites. I'd just finished dinner and it was late, dark outside through my living room window. The TV was on.
This image flashed into my brain, and I realized that it was triggered by a multitude of things around me presently. I was on my laptop, sitting cross-legged at my eating table; my dinner, as it likely was in that memory, was yellow curry, it's pungent odor is likely the major impetus for this recall. It's dark outside and the TV is on - a Law and Order DVD, as I always had on for background noise back then, a tradition that clearly hasn't died. Lastly, I'm getting over an illness which would be a trigger for grad school memories in and of itself. You don't take three tours through the emergency room in two years without it leaving a bit of a mark. I'm also alone in my apartment now. I was almost always alone then.
The reason for this long and rambling explanation is the reflection that the emotions that I felt attached to that memory were lonley.... and yet also something else that I can't quite put my finger on. Contentment? Quiet satisfaction? Feeling centered?
I think the latter is closest to the mark, which is what spurred my thought process. Grad School was not a very happy period in my life. My first year was miserable, mostly of my own making. I didn't know who I was, what I wanted and I fumbled around making a mess, both figuratively and literally. My values system was turned on it's head, and it got to a point that I didn't recognize myself.
My second year, with some help from some best friends, a best friend's mother and a relationship setting itself to rights was much... cleaner. I realigned my value system, dedicated myself to the building that I directed and finally got to work on my thesis. One of the major results of this realignment was that I cut almost everyone down at EIU out of my life - leading to an existence lived... eigen, in english, alone, private. The German has a more comprehensive meaning, in my opinion. I spent a vast majority of my time by myself. For someone who used to be a blazing extrovert, this was a drastic life change, and not one that was necessarily bad.
The wrap up of this long-winded affair is that it suddenly struck me that in that lonely memory, dinner for one - if you will, I was centered. I had scholarship and I felt like I was achieving something, I might have been lonely but I felt like I had a purpose. I may have gone about that purpose in a teeth gritted, blinders on, driven sort of way that blocked out emotions, but it was still purpose. I feel a bit now like I've lost that purpose and I'm feeling off-centered. I'm happier in a million different ways than I was back then, but a little adrift. My new journey, I supposed is to how to find a purpose that I don't have to clutch onto with a depression fueled desperation. I need a little more than work, I need something scholarship driven and I need to discover a way to commit to that without dedicating every waking thought and effort.
One little sensory fueled impression - quite a lot to mull over, what?
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