False Memories

 It took my parents about five days to get from Chicago to Phoenix, Arizona when we moved there in 1993. After celebrating my mom’s birthday in an Oklahoma City motel with pizza and cake, we went through Oklahoma and the Texas panhandle through Amarillo. I fell asleep in the back seat with headphones on, set to a radio station I found by sliding the dial in Amarillo. The static that played after the radio station faded as we got out of Amarillo helped me sleep. I slept for a very long time. When I woke up, I looked out the window and there was beautiful desert landscape with cacti and red sand. For some reason, I have a memory of Señorita by Puff Daddy playing on my headphones as I saw the desert for the first time. 

But there are problems with this memory. Señorita by Puff Daddy didn’t come out until 1997. It must have been another song, or still static. It wasn’t the first time I’d seen the Sonoran desert landscape, either. My parents and I flew there in 1992 to check it out and see if we wanted to move there. This May have been the first time I was seeing it while driving through a rural area. I don’t know why I think of seeing the desert for the first time after a long car nap every time I hear that song. That song always brought that memory up. 

I do not know what a good balance is when it comes to false memories. Am I a liar because I have a false memory?  Does this mean I’m a bad person for “making it up”?  Didn’t make it up?  Not consciously, I didn’t. Is this an example of a false memory caused by trauma?  Did moving from Chicago to Arizona at age 14 count as a traumatic experience?  Not according to ACES. ACES doesn’t include moving away. However, when my own daughter was 14, I was on again off again with a man I knew in high school, who lived in Arizona. What if I had ended up with him and said, “We’re moving to Arizona, say goodbye to your friends?”  I would have been considered a bad parent. But, I was divorced from Anna’s dad, my parents weren’t. Does that make me immune from feeling trauma from a big change like that at age 14?  Even though I was in agreement with my parents, I still felt sadness when we left and some shell shock at key cultural differences between Chicago and Phoenix. That was the first year I really started feeling heat sensitivity that I still suffer from to this day. I really wonder the validity of my false memory. Why do I have it, and is it ok if I have it?  Was moving traumatic for me and I don’t realize it?  If yes, then how does that reconcile with the fact that my parents did sit me down at age 13 and asked my opinion of moving there and I said I was cool with it?  How does that reconcile with the fact that the change in my mom’s mental health after we moved had a positive affect on me?  The moving itself was still jarring. It’s a mystery I guess