i was drinking coffee a couple days ago - nothing unusual - do it a couple times a day - and have for decades. suddenly it is a trigger and i am back as a kid, maybe 8-10 years old, riding in step-father's car - front-seat, passenger side. i am drinkig coffee - creamy and sweet out of the beige plastic top of a red plaid thermos, i can see and feel the color/pattern/texture of the seat's upholstery, see the dashboard knobs/levers/buttons/lights, he is driving - it is exciting - don't know where we are going but it is just the two of us - feels special and grown-up. we stop at a diner for dinner and i have hamburger steak with raw onion slices (for the first time - and i like them!) on top.

- and that's it.

don't know where we went or why. don't know why no one else was with us. i know we stayed overnight at a motel. but i don't remember any details about that - ot the rest of the trip.

and it has left me feeling very up-in-the-air. i don't knw if this is just a nice memory - for a change - and there may be no reason for any further concern... or if there is some nefarious reason why i don't remember "the rest of the story." i don't know if i should be trying to get back more details or just not worry about it. obviously my past makes me suspect the worst - but this time i don't feel much anxiety about it - but maybe that's jsut because i'm getting used to the whole thing - and it no longer has the same power to incapacitate me like it used to.

it is the vividness of the details that i DO remember that makes me wonder if there is more that i SHOULD remember. it seems important for some reason. anybody have any similar experiences with partial memories - that seem harmless - and were or were not?

Lee

I think there are some vivid memories that are hard to place in context. I don't know what your CSA's link to your step-father is or isn't, so I don't have the context for what you're relating here. I also don't have the context for coffee in a car for a 9-year-old, so maybe the vividness could merely be related to that (heightened caffeine that a kid isn't used to specifically).

I do know that some memories of mine can be vivid because of their unusual "normalcy" or what I expected normalcy to be at a given time when I was having a particularly hard time otherwise. Also, different memories can be more vivid during the healing process as adjust more healthily.

Depending on where you are on your journey, the memory could either be a gradual linkage to something significant about your childhood, or they could just be an easy way to progress toward a fuller breadth of some of the good around some of the bad.

That's what came to mind when I read the post. Sounds like you aren't jumping to conclusions too quickly, so that's good.

well - about the context:
step-father was abusive - in various ways.
so that is a nautural suspicion.
it would be nice to think that there were some good times too - but that has been hard to find.
so this could go either way...
it might just be that once the door of repressed memories was opened, other memories can come out - regardless of their significance.