I hope this happens to other people as well. A few days ago, secure in the present, reading in my room with a stable mind, I was struck from behind by a memory I'd long tried to suppress (with reasonable success). The sneaky bastard somehow escaped, and came to remind me of who I was, only a few years ago. "Psst - does this sound familar?" it whispered. "Do you remember yourself as this, speaking to a manic-depressive high school friend, saying hey it's not all bad, look at all the famous artists, musicians and creatives who drew their spark from the turbulence within? You should remember how smugly, how easily you glossed over this suffering, how glancingly you addressed this - a hard thing to come to someone over, a difficult admission.

I remembered, and I winced. Wincing is a useful, common reaction to my geeky, awkward past. Good god - the injuries I inflicted with my faux connections with people, with my aspirations of understanding. It's the extent of my unknowing, the way in which I arrogantly dared to conflate my adolescent angst with my friend's affliction which makes me cower, try harder to bury it.

And more. Easter weekend, returning home to my family. Mum discovered an old home video, 1998, and coaxed Row and I to watch it. I could not sit down and watch it for more than five minutes. I recognised myself only as a satire, a caricature. Did I really have bleached hair? Did I really speak in monosyllables and grunts? Was I that awkward, that fumbling, that disconnected?

Talking to a friend, a psych student recently uncovered this: Repression is a useful evolutionary tool, employed to allow us to live life forwards without being hamstrung by the bloodiness and messiness of the past. It's not something to be conquered, but to be appreciated. Too right.