Well, you've channeled it incredibly. I wish I could write about the rough stuff with more clarity. It feels like every time I try to start, it gets blurry and moves away from me. Not the actual people and events, but the emotion behind it, the reason I'm writing about it in the first place.

Well, it has taken me ten years and over, in some cases.

I've always been able to channel the bits I remember. The problem is, I'd blocked out so much, and something about this year has put some cracks in the memory armour, and things are beginning to surface.

There was a pregnancy in there. I'd literally blanked it, and the miscarriage. Mind-fucking, isn't it? I have no idea how much stuff I've lost, or may get back. Some of this stuff I'm getting confirmation from friends who were there, because I literally am not sure.

Weird.

You really have leapt right over that wall to see what's back there, haven't you, deb?

You really have leapt right over that wall to see what's back there, haven't you, deb?

The lion only stinks in the cage - if you let out into the jungle, it may be scary, and may potentially eat you, but at least it smells like a lion, not like something in a cage, and the fight is a fair fight, and the end a fair end.

If I choose not to see the monsters on the path, I have no right to complain when they devour me.

Yes, mixed metaphors.

Damn, Deb. Does this kind of stuff come in flashes, or seem dream-like? (Possibly entirely too personal, so feel free to tell me to shove it.)

There's one tiny thing, from when I was very young, that I remembered when I was in college. The trouble is not knowing if what I see is real, or a memory of some sick sort of dream, and it's nothing I could EVER ask about. But that was just one event, and it was childhood. I can't imagine having any extended period of time lost. I'm glad that these exercises help you with the mind-fuckness of it all.

Vaguely remembering that Deb isn't a hugger, makes her tea and tells her she rocks.

It's bits and pieces, Lilty. I'll interact with something - a song, a scent, turning my head and seeing a pattern of leaves leaving shadows on a wall as I walk by, a conversation about something - and something will trigger, and I'll stop right where I am and pick at the fragment, teasing it out, trying to remember all of it. The midlife complication comes because I can't trust some of it. How much of this is real? The core memory, certainly. But what am I remembering accurately?

Sometimes I can ask. I remembered two gigs in December 1975, but I mixed one with the other; luckily, I have three friends who were at both. One was at Winterland, so they came backstage with us and of course they all three remember the evening, and all their memories agree with mine. But as an example, there are things I'd forgotten that they all remember: me giving Rex Jackson (one of the Grateful Dead roadies, a man I cordially loathed, present because the gigs were the Jerry Garcia Band) hell, because he was power-tripping, refusing to let said friends backstage, doing the "they aren't on the guest list" deal. I'd forgotten that, but when Marlene (the friend) reminded me, I also remembered the rest: that N had come out and snapped at Rex and told him to back the hell off, these were friends and family. And Marlene didn't remember that, but Dee did, the entire conversation.

None of this is easy. But writing about it - it's my only way of letting this particular lion out of the cage.

Well, if you come out of it on the other side feeling ok, kudos, because you're producing some very truthful, visceral stuff.

Thing is, the object isn't to come out feeling ok - the thing about this stuff is that healing won't necessarily mean feeling good. I expect this is going to be an open wound or a tender tooth for as long as I've got on this planet.

But at least I'll be able to see it. I hope.

Or, in the words of that tender philosopher, Denis Leary, "Life sucks. Get a helmet." (I wasn't exactly directing that at Deb, though.)