awoken to waking memories

I had a meeting early this morning, and was anxious about getting up early enough to make it, so I ended up waking up around 5am. While I was laying there trying to fall back asleep, in between tossing and turning and poking James to make him stop snoring, my mind, for whatever reason, drifted to memories that I haven’t thought of in probably 8 or 9 years. Most of what I was thinking about, where memories that I have blocked out, due to the fact that I had a pretty crappy childhood (despite the fact that there were actually a few high points). These were mostly memories of middle school and high school.

Here’s what I remember of the memories that flashed through my head this morning:

• I remember running for Treasurer when I was in middle school (don’t remember what year). WTF was I thinking? I also remembered the speech… I remember hearing the “F” word (not fuck, ya’ll) a couple of times as I took the podium. Nice. Kids are so kind aren’t they?
• I remember getting into a food fight in the cafeteria, and having to do lunch detention for it. The problem I had with that, was that we had food thrown at our table every day, and that was the one day we just couldn’t take anymore, and my friend Shelly threw her pizza at the jerks that threw food at us all the time. They had to do detention as well, but we were blamed. It is always those that fight back that are blamed.
• I remember getting into a fight with a kid named Chris, and literally kicking him in the stomach after I knocked him on the ground. He picked on me all of the time, and I thought kicking his ass would make me feel better; and at that moment, it did.
• I somehow became friends with this really popular girl when I started high school, and I was invited to sit at the popular table. One day their table was too full, and so I went to choose another seat, and they all came over to sit with me; one by one. One of the other girls (not the one that I initially became friends with) noticed I was sitting somewhere else, and came over to sit with me, and so I asked her, “why aren’t you sitting with your friends?”, and she replied, “what do you mean, I am.”. I thought I would burst with happiness, and I still get a warm feeling when I think about it.
• I once fell asleep in Geometry class, which wasn’t so bad, because I usually am a pretty silent sleeper; what made it bad, was the sound/sensation of me farting woke me up. That is still embarrassing, damn. I seriously don’t think anyone noticed though, so I guess it wasn’t that bad.
• I remember in 7th grade, something happened with the government (I seem to believe it was war/attack related?), and my social studies teacher didn’t teach class, and held us in her classroom for most of the day (since it was where we were when “it” happened). She said that if we had activities we could work on, we were more than welcome, and she included using Walkmans. I, for whatever reason, had mine, and listened to the Young Guns II Soundtrack. I have no idea why I remember that detail.

With all of these random glimmers of memories from my childhood coming back this morning, I tried harder and harder to remember other things; but the weird thing is, I really can’t. It is weird how you can block out feelings and memories to cope with bad things that have happened in your life (like my sister not remembering anything to do with her car accident). Even weirder still, is that I can’t unblock them. Anyone else have this same experience with blocked memories? If so, why? I could go into more detail about the crappy childhood if you wish, but my anxiety is high enough today without delving deep into it; so I will start with just this glimpse into it.