Reflections on Weight By Liz Ludwig

I lied back on my bed listening to my kindle methodicly announce each word precisely, and felt completely at ease.  The story of Atlas a familiar one, (from all of the times teachers have assigned it).  I lie there waiting excitedly wondering which part of the story she was going to change - also nervous knowing that i don't like change and that i might be saddened by some of her re-wrights.

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This is how my heart functions.  It likes to know how the story is going to end.  I want to plan everything out and chose my own ending.  Do you remember those books that had "choose" your own endings, well I hated those because I could never read the same story twice.  With TV shows I am similar, I have only a few shows that I have seen...and seen all the way through...but i have watched them many times, they are comforting and soothing.  

reread not rewritten and yet even in the rereading of a familiar book, i get something new out of it.  I find something that had stayed on the page last time, and i am forced to acknowledge that it is indeed me that has changed.  Why then am I so scared of my own change and the change of my surroundings-it is the possibility of a devastating ending that my heart has had enough of and will not accept more of, yet- same time- it expects at every turn devastation, disappointment   
I have learned to fear and hate illness, disease, death, loss, movement, divorce, broken hearted....

yet, I have learned more, so much more from my life-and my mothers illness (all of the "positive" things-which I speak of often, I just don't talk about the "negative" ones because people don't want to hear the bad side, the hardship, they really just want to hear that you are doing fine, and to congratulate you for being so strong.) 

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Yet, as the story unfolded I began to appreciate the updated language into moddern colloquial, much more easily understood.  I found I could not tell where she had REWRITTEN and where the origonal story differenshiated, my memoriy of Atlas's story has been rewritten in my memory as hers.

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The scary truth is that my memory is so often rewritten, like a computer program, edited and updated.  There are memories of my as a child which I have only because my father has told them to me they are from his perspective and not my own, but they seem like a memory.  The most frequent one is due to emotional editing   Where I know that i have not seen the whole picture due to the colored film which my emotions have placed over a situation....so i try to remove that film to see more clearly what actually happened.  

Other times i do the opposite, and a situation latter becomes colored with an emotional film days later.