What Do You Remember? How?
A lockjaw response to depression
‘Lockjaw’ is a medical condition where your muscles tense to the point that you can’t open your mouth.
I don’t have lockjaw.
If you’ve been following along, you may be aware that my self-analysis is a consistent and ongoing behaviour. However, much of it happens at a level of which I am not totally conscious. Often, I am unaware of what my subconscious is stewing over, until it starts to impinge on my every thought. Once I am aware of it, whatever it is, I am forced to deal with the implications, whether I want to or not. Not doing so can heighten anxiety, and avoidance can lead to depression and other issues. So it is in my best interest to pay attention when my internal analysis starts ringing alarm bells.
Disassociating much?
Yeah, at times I feel in control of this process. This is not one of those times. I am depressed, and due to that continual analytical ‘feature’ of my self, can positively identify at least some of the reasons why, which the most prominent being that I am actively trying to avoid the latest self-analytical review and its implications.
Mind, though it had to be pointed out to me that I was depressed, that began a long-established process in which my conscious brain must ponder the problem and identify the causes and effect whether I really want to or not. If I am depressed, I usually don’t want to know the issue, or am avoiding it, which is its own spiral.
Text, such as this, is my preferred medium, as I have a great deal of trouble describing all of this in person, to any person, largely because these are innate processes and continue unabated beyond any conscious claim of control.
However, if I don’t write these things down, the pressure builds and the pressure builds until it’s very much a physical sensation, a tensing of the muscles in my arms, hand, fingers. A ache in my cheeks, eyes, jaw.
My jaw, teeth, seem ready to bite at the world but lock tight instead, until I open up a blank page and start typing. I don’t know what I’m going to type until I do, but when there’s a need, the pressure builds and it sets itself in my jaw, locking it firm, locking it into position.
But I don’t have lockjaw.
Nor do I grit and grind my teeth, though there is a history of that both in my family and in my own behaviour. Or so I think – there are certain actions, things I do or don’t do that are so ingrained that I must now interpret them as learned behaviours.
Now.
Now, as I type, my jaw it locked, teeth gapped open, lips consciously together. My teeth are held such, and if I close them, they snap shut, with impact, with pain, with momentary memories of previous instances, previous habits.
Now, I know the feel of my teeth, closed. Front row comfortably sitting at fore. Now, as I experiment, a familiar grinding motion appears, along with the knowledge that I used to do this, incessantly.
Now, I retreat to the lockjaw position, to ruminate, reflect.
This is all new to me, now.
None of this is new to me.
Both statements are true and within that confusion and conflict of fact rests one of the major reasons I am and have been so depressed of late, and willing to be so.
But I will get to that.
Returning to the lockjaw, whatever it’s behavioural origins; it seems to appear when I need to record or white something down, to admit, utter, say, words. As I type, so does this tension – usually, maybe, I seem to recollect.
I don’t know.
Thus, we circle back round, quicker than I anticipated, but the spiral is tight here, and fast – a waterspout of angst and retribution that vacuums joys.
Now, in the long-term sense of the matter, I constantly doubt myself.
Now, in the act of writing, I have rediscovered that I used to grit and grind my teeth, and am in the process of recalling those actions, the triggering circumstances, and accompanying habits, as well as experiencing flashes of memory that provide the location and time of day, but lack any context as to why I so felt stressed.
Now, I am wishing I hadn’t started to write about the lockjaw, because had I not, I would also not have begun to recall such things.
However, at the same time I know that this is the perfect example of the current situation. Here is a memory or a series of memories that were beneficial to forget, and which were likely forgotten as part of a natural process of living, in which new memories are formed, and focused on. In essence, my teeth don’t (didn’t) grind and grit because I had learned new, better habits, including not closing my jaws when my lips meet.
Beneficial for my tooth health, a strange habit put in place by self-control, who knows when. But, as of now, it is something I will have to work at, especially as all those instances of memory describe to my brain, my reflexes, the perfect time to grit and grind, to feel pain.
I am working around to a conclusion, while trying to avoid the very thing the lockjaw indicates I need to write, if only to accept the implications.
My memory is shot.
Well, no it’s not.
Not exactly.
I’m pleased to report that everything I could ever want to remember exists in some form within my head, as well as all that I would want to forget.
However, until the moment at which I actively do remember a given fact, such as that I used to do as wombats do with my teeth, there is absolutely no way to distinguish between these lost recollections.
Rather than losing my memory, I have lost the filing system.
A quick analogy, just now found within my head.
Of the many schools I attended, I favoured the library of one in particular, for it was humid outside and there were a multitude of kids, few of which I knew how to get along with. Mind, that as I type, I’m sitting, eyes closed, actively recollecting the times upon times spent in that library, the books I read, the people I was classmates alongside, many of whom I had not thought about in – well, I literally don’t know how long.
In that library, I learnt to guide a turtle around a black and white laptop screen, and later saw a hamster dance, but before we were guided through how to find information on the internet, we had to learn how to find it in the books of the library. For that, there was a filing system, a card catalogue, where every book in the library was assigned a card in a filing cabinet, sorted by category. Yes, my first encounter with the Dewey Decimal system was purely a manual affair. Where now, a quick search for a topic on a computer produces a number code and a quick jaunt through the bookshelves, if the info isn’t already uploaded online, in those days, each topic has a master index card, and your info could be found in any of the many books indexed behind, each on their own card. Ah, so sorry, your book has been leant out…
Ugh. There’s other associated memories there, which I would wilfully rather, now, forget. I spent far more valuable time with books that people at that school. I learnt far more about how to interact from books than I did people, though there were good times too.
The memories all exist.
What I have somehow lost is the index, but when I am reminded of a particular topic, a habit, a interaction, the index card in my head slots into place, recreating connections and associations with all the other extant memories.
Sometimes it can be guided by intent and semi-procedural behaviour, as it has been, now. A analysis of behaviour (lock jaw) or an association of terminology (indexation), that then realign, and somehow procure established memories. Controllable to an extent, but it all relates, somehow, to the topic at hand, even the bullying experienced in the safe confines of the library. It all relates, but if I turn my attention to other things, so does the re-indexation of my memory shift.
Maybe. Neither of these examples have touched on deep emotions. The school library was a haven, but the deeper memories there were in reading books, and the associated emotions come from the books and were not wholly mine. Interactions with people, teachers, classmates, bullies (either/or) happened in moments between books.
Memories of gritting, grinding teeth sparks flashes of instance, locations, scenery, without context. Perhaps in knowing, contextualising those moments I can make assumptions about the cause, but that’s all they are – suppositions.
Neither affects me greatly. Each is an event of repair, per se, not something I might actively want to avoid.
At other times, the memories cascade, whether I want them to or not. Active attention on a series of events can distract, while alcohol can numb, but both of those distract only surface level consciousness – that is, what I am aware of. Once a cascade of memories starts to return, it happens in the background, and there is nothing I can do to stop it.
The other night, for instance, it was my dad’s 70th. A birthday party filled with people I know, or should know, did know, for there are, were, holes there. It’s only a couple of days ago, but I have a good eye for faces, and I don’t know what I didn’t remember before, and can’t exactly say what I do remember now.
I do know I began the evening in depression, and no little fear. Anticipation, stress, pain, but yes, fear.
Because in that situation, in any human interaction with people I know, or have known, or should know, I don’t know where the holes are.
Now, I still don’t know where the holes are, or were, or how many of them have been filled-in by the cascade, or still exist as pot-holes to trip me up down the line.
On the surface, it was a good night.
Dad, being a character in his own right, and a teller of stories, wrote a quiz for the attendees, so, each of us having been handed a badge with a bird on it upon arrival, had to form teams according to our badge bird. A grand means of intermingling disparate strangers. Five rounds, with eight questions per to total 40 multiple-choice questions about the years and events surrounding his life. The answers, if you had been paying attention, were often in the stories.
By random badge assignment, my team was two adults and a selection of under-10 kids. We got 26 questions right, and won.
Each question, each set of possible answers, another event in the cascade. Is it any wonder I was drinking – not to excess, not above the limit, but enough to dull the thoughts. I have done that quite a bit of late, enough to dull the thoughts. The memories.
For mid cascade they come a calling. Good or bad. When was the first time I heard this story? When was the last?
Its not just the fact of the matter, the story. It’s the web of associated events, the ripples.
Drop a burning brand in a darkened cavern, watch as oil-soaked flame hits the water beneath, ripples spreading, illuminated until the fire dies. Now scatter a dozen. More. Suddenly, in the glow, there’s a glimpse of how vast this cavern really is, from its high roof, specked with holes for the stars to shine through, to the deepening sunken depths – is there a city down there.
But you never see the all of it, and in all the vision, what details did you miss?
That’s my memory, now, full of unknown.
Does a dragon lurk in the darkened deeps? Worse. Do mosquitoes?
I know, am aware of, two different fears, fear-become-realities. Terrors.
My long-term memory is full of unseen holes.
My short-term memory is, too, in a much more active sense. Depression, anxiety, alcohol, stress, sleeplessness all contribute to trauma which does its own number on the working memory.
I always – for vales of – had conversations with people in my head, rehearsing, or revising what should have been said. Now, I forget which of these conversations have happened only in my head, or only online, in person, in dream.
What I do remember, is that, before, I could distinguish the lot. Could plan my day-to-day life, well, not well, but better than it is now. Schedule events, meetings, projects, deadlines, all in my head. Keep track of days, conversations, statements, rent, invoices, payments, full moons and new. All in my head.
And it all still happens!
Except I can’t, now, remember why I’m doing so. Or fix a date to an event, and an event to a schedule.
So, I know a third thing.
The indexation that I lost, and which lost me, well, all that makes me, historically, me, is the effect of an issue that is continues to lose the coherence of me, as is, continuing to be me.
There is no mystery to the issue. That was solved in its inception. I have been through this, to a certain application and extent, before, and that too is ongoing.
Covid-19 or its aftereffects overwhelmed my system to the point where all nervous impulses registered as pain. My brain forgot how to index the signals produced by my body, so in an ongoing process, I am consciously having to retrain my brain as to how to interpret those signals. So far, I have succeeded in identifying temperature (heat, cold), hunger, thirst, tiredness, bowel pressure, muscles stretching, and stress induced by senses being overwhelmed, such as when the music is too loud or there are too many conversations happening at once.
All these and more previously caused debilitating pain.
However, there are other signals I have not yet been successful in identifying. Nuances that matter. The other night, while playing a new boardgame with several younger relatives (multiple voices, each overriding the others), it began to rain, droplets heavy on the tin roof, and multiple frogs began to sing, out of time.
I had to disengage, take myself to a darkened section of the house. Limit the stimuli, all because of pain. Nervous system pain, for which paracetamol, ibuprofen do nothing.
I am rebuilding the indexation of pain.
That of my memories happens, whether I want it to, or not.
But until it happens, I don’t know whether I want it to, or not. Don’t know if the memories it recovers were ones I wanted to, needed to, forget in the first place.
At that, I should define memory. For me, in the experiencing of, a memory is the gathering of all stimuli experienced in and of a single event or moment – physical, emotional, social, spatial. Each one of those aspect, or all, may associated with other memories.
When one such collection of things is recalled, reindexed, so too are those associations rebuilt.
Memory associations may span temporal eras, subject matter, abstract thought, dreams. Any logic bound to the association of memories is yet unknown to me, though perhaps it is in the queue for analysis, after this current kerfuffle resolves. Or perhaps not. I, the thinking me, does not control that queue.
I could continue, but in typing about schedules, I have remembered a pressing matter on mine.
I leave then, with this last terror.
Previously, I have described the poetry I write, perform, publish, as my self-indexation of emotion. Of being able to, in the instance of reading or performing a poem, or being able to step into that moment and re-experience those emotions, recall that situation.
You may think, then that re-reading my poems would help recover the indexation of my life.
This is not the case.
I pick up a poem now, and if it is devoid of contextual clues, or associated notes, there is nothing, nothing associated with it.
Much of my poetry is now only holes to me.
There lies despair.