Survival memory

Having just gotten through the worst employment experience of my life, I am now going through a period of strange rebound. Let me clarify my last statement. This was not just the worst employment experience I have ever had, but the worst overall experience I have ever had. The job had all the definitions of a nightmare: abhorrently long hours, predatory and profoundly incompetent management, a cut throat client, and severe stress levels. Essentially an entire facet of my personality shut down and was replaced by some previously unknown personality designed purely for survival. Interesting fellow, but I am glad to see him fade away.

Rather than focus on this negativity of this experience, I want to speak to the wonderful return of my less pragmatic personality facets. I hesitate to call this my artistic side as it sounds like a garbage cliché, but that descriptor really does fit the bill. I can now actually reserve brain capacity for musing and creation, with surprising results.

One of the first rebound effects was the realization of what portions of my personality/memories had been repressed by my survival personality (hitherto referred to as Darwin). For some strange reason that I cannot explain, it would appear that Darwin removed access to almost all of my good childhood memories. The bad and traumatic memories were accessed constantly (the mental illness and social paranoia of my management closely mirrored experiences I was exposed to as a child). This reliving of past trauma is to be expected, but I did not expect the blanking out of good memories as well.

I've learned from therapists that human beings are actually comprised of a "self" which is surrounded by many different "role" personalities, which are like plug ins for certain situations. My Darwin plug in apparently went through a triage procedure, and decided that my kinder, more sensitive side could not survive the exposure to the depths of negativity I endured each down. As such, this sensitive side was packed up and moved to some sort of metal bunker to ensure its survival. Nice move Darwin! I applaud your proficiency and foresight.

So to sum up, what brought up this revelation?  I walked passed a cafeteria display and saw those little cardboard milk boxes you used to get in grade school. I was flooded by a memory of when I was in kindergarten and my job was to take the milk order down to the cafeteria and have them load up this little cart with the milk cartons. I loved pushing this cart back to the classroom and seeing the delight on the faces of my classmates when I came into the room. This is a fond memory and I used to think of it often. However, it has been gone for about half a decade (curiously the same period of my last employment). Welcome back milk memory! Darwin has been honorably discharged!