It’s the 5th day of Podomas. Today’s prompt is:
‘I am … because …..’
When I asked Lucy’s answer to this on her podcast, she chose the answer “I’m vegan because….’
I’ve found this to be a rather difficult proposition, as I don’t feel like I’m labeling myself as a nobody. And what I’m saying is that we shouldn’t put labels on ourselves, because you can be anyone you want, and you shouldn’t put yourself in a box, yadda yadda yadda, I don’t mean that in a fluffy sense. No, that’s not what I mean. The only label I really have is as a mother. I am a mother because my child was born. Well, that’s not very interesting.
But then I started thinking a little more about who I am consistently, and all I could really think about was that I was happy.
I. I’m a really happy person.
That’s a strange way to say it, isn’t it? Not many people would say that. Okay, this is awkward.
I’ve always been happy (apart from the moody teenage years) and I’m usually really happy. Sure, I have days where I’m not the happiest and days when the old PMT kicks in and I’m just a bitch, but overall I’m a really happy person.
I totally understand why I’m happy too…it’s because I subconsciously eliminate bad things. I didn’t mean to do it and often didn’t even realize I was doing it, but I honestly don’t remember anything bad about it.
I am happy because I filter out the bad stuff
I started realizing that I did this as a kid, and my friends said things like, “Remember that awful thing that happened last year?” I say, “Um.. no… I really don’t remember that.’
When I was about 10 years old, I realized that in my memory the weather was perfect. When I thought about my school summer vacation, all I could remember was six weeks of scorching sun. When I think of winter and the Christmas holidays, all I remember is snow and frosty mornings with dazzling blue skies.
I don’t think it rained when I was a child. No, it rained once. When I was about 8 years old, an incredible storm happened and we were watching it from my father’s office window overlooking a field. Lightning lit up the sky like strobe lights in a nightclub, and rain fell like waves crashing on the shore. The lightning was so loud that I thought the house was going to collapse. But it wasn’t scary, it was one of the most exciting things I’ve ever seen.
Shortly after graduating from school, I ran into a girl in my grade. We weren’t friends, but we were friendly enough to say hi easily. We were at a bar and we were both a little tipsy, so she apologized for being a bitch when we were in college.
I smiled nervously, racking my brain. She felt her gears turning as she went back through her old memories to see what the hell she was talking about. She didn’t remember that she was a bitch. In fact, I almost didn’t even remember talking to her.
I told her she didn’t need to apologize and quickly walked away from the awkward conversation.
It still happens. Sam says something like: “Remember when we went to Bali? You were really sick?’
No, all I remember is sunshine, yoga, fruit smoothies, and bouncing around in the rice fields of Bali.
Or he said, “Remember when we had that awful job in Sydney? We worked 14 hours a day in a warehouse with no windows, so we hardly saw daylight for about 12 weeks?’
No, I have no recollection of there being any windows in that warehouse. I remember that the job was crap, but my favorite memory is that the pay was so high. We left after 12 weeks and used the money to travel around Asia for 3 months. I had enough money to buy a car when I got home!
There it is. The reason I’m a happy person is because I naturally filter out all the bad things and don’t actually remember them. I guess I just don’t dwell on it. I don’t think about it or overanalyze it after it happens, but I probably read the happy memories over and over again, so they stay in my brain.
This may not be a good thing. Ten years from now, this may come back to haunt me. And we’d end up spending a fortune on therapy trying to dig up all these bad memories and come to terms with things like the fact that it was raining during the summer when we were 14 years old. The girl was probably a bitch.
Check out my other Podmas posts here..
The best advice I’ve ever received
About being honest online
I fell in love with being a mother