what I remember

 Occasionally I write a story from my childhood, or young adulthood, although you would be hard pressed to tell which is which sometimes. I am writing it the way I remember it. That isn't to say that it is necessarily factual. I do tend to remember the things I want to remember, the way I want to remember them. I think that is true for the majority of us. It isn't a conscious decision to do so, it is just a habit. What we are recording are our intentions, not the actual result. We know how the story should have ended. When the story didn't end the way we had envisioned, we just change the plot. In that way the desired result is achieved. It is a convenient mental health tool.
 We do this because we can't know the intentions of others. We know our motivations and intentions most of the time, although there are times I get lost, but we have to go forward by trusting others. There are times when the others don't cooperate with our plans. It is those times that change the story. Others are changing the plot and we resist that. I know what I want. When others change the plot it isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we almost always interpret it that way. The reason is obvious, we don't know how the story will end. In our mind we know how our story ends and so are confident in that. It is a trust issue. How many times has the story come out well after having followed this advice, trust me ? You know what I mean ?
 I was thinking about this because I was considering writing a story from those younger days. Those days would of course include people from that time period. Those folks would be aware of the story and the characters involved. The only problem with that is I'm quite certain they remember the story quite differently. I wouldn't want to upset anyone. I'll confess I do get annoyed when my remembrances are challenged. Hey, these are my memories and you can't tell me they are wrong ! But, they are just that, my memories, and aren't presented as historical facts ! They are subject to interpretation. People sometimes do that with dreams as well. When we alter our memory of events are we creating dreams ? I believe that is exactly what we are doing. It is how the story should have ended.
 Not every story has a happy ending, I am very much aware of that. We often hear how our lives are like a book and there are different chapters in that book. I agree with that analogy, it's just that I'm thinking in terms of paragraphs ! I do have a tendency to examine each and every line. I hesitate to change anything without having first seen the result. This has lead me down some roads I wish I hadn't traveled at all. You can't rewrite the book, but you can rewrite the paragraph ! Then the result isn't so unexpected and its' impact lessened. That is what we are doing with those memories. It is nothing more than a reinterpretation of the facts. I can't be responsible for what you believe.
 I'm thinking that this is just a mechanism for survival. It is designed to prevent us from dwelling  on the bad. I have known, and still know, some folks that haven't mastered this technique. They spend a great deal of their time languishing in their mistakes, saying what if. I rewrite the paragraph and so make the mistake a part of the story. That is how I can set it aside. It isn't that I place the fault on others, although that is sometimes helpful, I remind myself that I can't know the motivations or intentions of others. Then lacking that information I can further determine it really wasn't my fault. See how that works ? It's your fault, but not your fault. It then falls into the fate category. I have no control over fate. What I can control is what I remember.