Pain in a Spotless Mind

When remembering all that was written about in the book Pain: The Science of Suffering, people losing limbs was mentioned frequently. If a person should want to erase the instance that the limb was lost, how do they explain why it is gone? In theory they should have memories in which they had it and one day they awake with no memory of how it left or when it happened. To even make the matter simpler, how about we look at a scar. A scar is evidence of an event that happened. Some do fade, but usually it is a blemish forever imprinted upon your skin. When a memory is removed, how do you explain the scar? Usually all scars have a story to go along with it. Whether it is humorous, traumatic, ironic or natural, the stories of scars bring people together. In a popular song titled Swing Life Away by Rise Against the artist speak about this very fact.

"I'll show you mine
If you show me your first
Let's compare scars
I'll tell you whose is worse
Let's unwrite these pages
And replace them with our own words"

The lyrics, while somewhat gramatically incorrect (or just incorrect in general *cough*unwrite*cough*), get the point across. In the movie Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind it is entirely possible for people to erase events in which they have recieved scars. How do you explain something you have no memory of? Can you live with that empty memory of how you recieved a mark on your skin that you cannot explain? I couldn't.

Keeping with the theme of pain and music, I realized on my playlist I had two songs that were actually titled Pain. One I am saving for a future post if I do remember to use it. The one I am going to talk about is Three Days Grace's Pain. I have been extremely obsessed with this song since the beginning of my Pain class in school. My favorite lines are such.

"You're sick of feeling numb
You're not the only one
I'll take you by the hand
And I'll show you a world that you can
understand
This life is filled with hurt
When happiness doesn't work
Trust me and take my hand
When the lights go out you will understand

Pain, without love
Pain, I can't get enough
Pain, I like it rough
'Cause I'd rather feel pain than nothing at all"

The lines have seriously been haunting my sleep. Over the summer after I kept pushing away my then boyfriend and eventually ended the relationship, my mother told me I push people away before they can hurt me. I have been studying my actions, as much as I can from a biased viewpoint, and I have come to concolusions that she is right. Would I erase any of my experiences in life? No, because they made me stronger and able to handle everything. Should I have done things differently? Absolutely. I needed to allow people to help me and listen to what I was going through. Instead I pushed away anyone that wanted to help and shouldered everything on my own. Today, however, I refuse to depend on anyone.

Now as I am beginning to become involved in relationships I throw out everything that would turn people away from me. I never allow myself to get too attached. Never, thought, have I thought that erasing a situation would make everything better. Joel realized this too late but he did come to this point eventually.Even though he had his memories erased and felt the pain of meeting Clementine again he did see that he needed to have the experience of heartbreak to move on.