never mind. Thanks Yaku, your reply was helpful! Thank Liese for my hugs

This message has been edited. Last edited by: pf,

Frosty - try not to be too hard on yourself. I apparently forgot witnessing my mom's boyfriend beat my oldest sister, throw her into a wall and drag her down the hallway by her hair. I was pretty young (five), but I still have no memory of him doing it, although it was done in front of me. Traumatic stuff like that can get lost and childhood stuff (even not traumatic) can get lost too. So traumatic childhood stuff sometimes just gets buried, I guess. I am having a lot of things come up, like memories I haven't thought of in a long time or memories I knew existed, but with feelings about them I never remember having (dissociated) and then some images/sounds/associated feelings that are coming on strongly that have no memory associated with them yet, so I don't know if they are a particular incident or a feeling about a person (in this case, that same abusive boyfriend my mom had). I don't know if this is normal or not...best to ask one of our "experts" here. I do know that I get very scared that it seems like there is a lot more there than I have ever allowed to be a part of "my story." I am trying to just know that although some more may come up and some stuff may always be buried, it does not mean anything is fundamentally wrong or bad about me. It just means my brain has had to file things in a certain way to cope. So, I'm trying to just be OK with it and take things as they come. That's my goal for now, at least. I know it must hurt to have forgotten something that important, because I can't believe all I can remember from my sister's abuse is that this guy made a hole in the wall (where he threw her). And I can't even remember that my mom had a mental breakdown for several months the next year...although I know it happened. Realizing stuff is missing, especially about other people who you should have remembered, hurts. But, it isn't that you were trying to hurt the person. It was that you were hurting and couldn't deal with keeping those memories on the surface, I guess. I could be wrong. I'm no expert.

(((((FROSTY)))))