Last night, I was tormented by a memory—one of those memories that surface in the fragile space between wakefulness and sleep. My body was already heavy with sleepiness, the comforter lay still, and my eyes refused to open. I was half dreaming, but still aware of my breath brushing against the fabric at its edge.
The memory unfolded before me like a short film, vivid enough to jolt me awake. I replayed it over and over in my head: a painful reminder of a mistake, a crossroads where one choice changed the course of my life.
I got out of bed and sat down at my desk, drifting into musings about that strange time when I ended a relationship that I might have been able to continue. She was sweet, beautiful, and perhaps her presence would have made my school years—and the years that followed—so much easier.
I call these existential memories. They often appear in that twilight zone between wakefulness and dreaming, and since I turned sixty, they have become increasingly intrusive. Just before you fall asleep, when you relinquish control of your consciousness and stop trying to concentrate, your defenses become weaker. That is precisely when such memories surface. Some say that the subconscious processes the pain.
Perhaps. But there is a difference between ordinary memories and memories that arise from crossroads in life—moments you regret endlessly because they did not turn out as you had hoped. Your conscience switches to “if only” mode and the reproach swells. At such moments, I remember the words of a supervisor at the seminary: “If you could have done it differently, you would have.” A consolation, albeit often a meager one, when I imagine how wonderful life could have been if I had chosen differently.
But not all memories are painful. Some are false. I am sure I have one from when I was three: long hair, walking down the hallway in Lineerstraat to greet my grandmother, perhaps visiting for my birthday or Sinterklaas. Yet I know it is false, because it only exists as a photo. When I was eleven or twelve, I realized that my memory never went beyond the image. Real memories can be rewound, replayed, viewed from different angles. This one couldn't. Yet it came back in dreams, as if my mind longed to relive a moment that had been preserved only in a photo.
There are also interpreted memories—memories you share with others, only to discover that their version is completely different from yours. A friend once told me that I had talked at length about his problems and that it had helped him. I let it go, even though I couldn't remember the conversation or its effect.
We carry false memories with us, painful memories, dream memories, and memories that we edit with our imagination. We imagine alternative outcomes: If only I had said this... If only I had done that. Yet such corrections rarely last longer than a few minutes, because the imagination is weak compared to memory. Sometimes we adjust memories logically: we replace impossibilities with plausible details. I didn't jump from the second floor, but from the fourth step of the staircase—where I really sprained my ankles.
Sometimes memory can be tested against reality. Oosterpark, for example – was there really a sandpit at the exit of 1e Oosterparkstraat? Could a fire have been lit there under the watchful eye of a neighbor boy? Yes, it was true. That memory of sand, fire, and the park keeper remains intact. And then there are memories that only arise in dreams – dreams that are remembered in dreams, often recurring, each time in greater detail.
Such a dream came the week before I moved out of Balistraat in Amsterdam. I had to hang a pulley, fourteen or fifteen meters above the street from the fourth floor. Night after night, I dreamed that I failed and fell on a car whose color changed with each dream. Each fall was preceded by a different scenario.
I called it a practice dream. My foster father disagreed. For him, the meaning lay not in the fall or the hook, but in the detail: I climbed up to the attic alone, while my best friend remained nervously in the living room, paralyzed by “the mere thought.”
When the moment finally arrived, on a Saturday morning at ten past eight, I grabbed the hook, walked calmly to the skylight, and attached it with a gentle swing of my arm. Just as I had practiced all week in my dreams. No problem at all. A positive memory—one that I still think back on with quiet satisfaction.
