Remembrance

Memory is a fragile thing, it both fades with time and fractures depending on the number of observers.

As social creatures we often adjust our memories as we go through life, based on our interaction with others, which means that a memory you have may have been influenced by the memories of others or by what you were told happened rather than what you remember happening.

Different people can remember the same event differently but all of them can be correct, even if some of them contradict each other.

The reason is that memory is a reflection of how each person perceives what is happening and not a recording of it. We all experience the world differently and as such we remember differently. This is especially true for the memories of children who are still learning the difference between reality and imagination.

For every truth, there are as many versions as there are people remembering it. Sometimes the truth is simply too painful for you to bear, so you adapt it to be less traumatic. Sometimes it is so traumatic that you file it away in a dark corner of your mind where it slowly festers and grows, and then only comes back to haunt you many years later when you're either old enough to face it or it has grown so big that your mind can't contain it anymore.

A story is a memory, fictitious or real, it may or may not have happened this way. That doesn't mean it is a lie or that it is any less real of a memory. There are no false memories, only different versions.

This story is based on true events, the words have been changed to protect the guilty and heal the innocent.