Part VII: Writing to Remember

Hours after Dr. Whitlock told me my notes were gone, I asked if we could set up a phone call to discuss anything she might remember.

The text back said:

“Sure. Anything you can recollect may jog my memory. I’ll have to get back to you regarding a time to talk, as I’m not home and need to check my schedule.”

So I interrogated my mom and dad separately to find out as much as I could, and then had them write up all that they remembered together. I had already heard most of what they came up with: separation anxiety morphed into OCD, crumpling up/starting artwork over after a lot of work to achieve perfection in Alyssa’s mind, erasing homework assignments until holes in paper, re-copying school notes to make them look nice, and daily notes or text messages to confess guilt.

I was as nervous as I was excited for the phone call with Dr. Whitlock. I knew it would be an emotional shit show, but I was ready for it. I was ready for the memories to flood my brain the moment I heard her voice.

On Saturday, October 30th, I heard her voice for the first time in 10 years. It sounded the same: low and calm.

She started by explaining that I was always very quiet—that I was “the kind of kid” who was very uncomfortable coming into therapy. She tried to do play therapy with me, a combination of playing and talking. When I did play, it was a lot of play and not a lot of conversation.

The remainder of the phone call was simply her regurgitating my parent’s note sheet. The only addition she made was reciting the words my mom was to say to me when I wrote her a letter: “that’s just one of those silly OCD thoughts, Alyssa. You are in control of your thoughts. Your thoughts aren’t in control of you.” I remembered this; I remembered it because I heard it religiously for years. I remember I hated hearing it. It meant I wouldn’t get the reassurance I thought I desperately needed.

But even those words didn’t bring the memories back. The sound of Dr. Whitlock’s voice did not prime my brain like I thought it would. Her memories did not magically allow me to re-discover some of my own. Talking to her was not emotional like I thought it would be. She told me the information she remembered, what I was there for, and that was it.

I understand that I will never know what my childhood OCD notes said, and I’ll never remember the horrors of what I went through as a child. But there’s something about the thought of remembering that dangles in front of me. It torments me. I thought the worst of my OCD was long gone; my childhood OCD seems unthinkable, unimaginable today. But for the moments when I long for remembering, it presents itself again. It creaks open the door in the spot in the ground for me and whispers “I’m back”.

This is the reason I write down exactly how I am feeling when something hard happens, or when I feel strongly about something: because I have accepted that there is no possibility for me to remember what happened. This is the reason I have pictures of an office on my camera roll—to remember what the Spravato treatment center looks like. This is why I spend my whole session—while I could be watching TV or feeling cool about the fact that I’m on esketamine—writing down exactly what I am experiencing. This is why I wrote about how I felt from the moment my mom told me Kathy was rushed to the hospital, when I held her hand and looked at her still body in the hospital bed, to the moment that I sat in the church and listened to my mom talk about the life of her best friend. This is why I pause and pull out my notes app when I am in class and hear something I don’t want to forget, or take a picture of a trash can.

There’s a certain pain that comes with forgetting; it feels like unjustified pain. Not remembering shouldn’t be as painful because I don’t know what I am missing, right? I should be lucky to forget because it was traumatic enough to live through and who would want to be reminded of that, right?

Rather, it’s painful because I know the memories contributed to the way I talk, the way I carry myself, and the way I present myself to the world. They helped shape who I am today.

I desire to remember because I want to be able to recall, but also because I feel that many people know my memories better than me. They remember what happened to me better than I do. And this comes back to losing my childhood OCD notes.