True or False?

I have this terrible habit of overthinking the past. I take each memory, scrutinize it in my head, turning it over a like a coin between my fingers. I wonder if my memories are as real and just to the truth, as they feel to me. I wonder if there are details that I have chosen to brush over. Or if I have glossed over things that were normally lackluster. I wonder if my mind plays tricks, deludes me into seeing things my way, for better or for worse.  What if there is no 'absolute truth'? What if what we remember becomes our truth, despite being far from reality? What if our memories are nothing but a version of the truth that we choose to believe?

Reliving old memories has always been bittersweet for me. I would rather have a moment in my mind than a picture in a frame. I would rather have a song in my head, reminding me of exactly how I felt instead of a souvenir in a box. I fear that each time I overturn the rubble of collapsed memories, I would uncover a skeleton that I buried. What if nothing was as I remember it now?  Perhaps that is the reason why I choose to rely on memories over concrete proof. 

Memories are fluid, influenced deeply by an array of emotions and naivety that eventually gets butchered by the passing time. You become smarter, older, wiser, perhaps even more cynical. It takes a second for you to conjure a memory and look at it differently each time. Each time you recollect the past, you add another perspective, and another version of the truth is erected.    

I wonder how many past moments have I single-handedly ruined in my head by re-interpreting the truth, wondering if perhaps I had been protecting myself all that time. What if nothing was the way I remember it to be? I wonder how many details have been lost in translation. How many times have I chosen to overlook kind words in favor of holding on to the harsher judgments? How many times have I chosen to forget the good in people and instead crucified them for their mistakes? Why do I stain happy memories?

I'm also guilty of putting on my rose-colored glasses and looking at the past as a place of comfort. Skimming over the difficulties because perhaps past battles do not seem so challenging once they have been won. Building a version of the truth with handpicked details that make the past look like a better place to be in. I wonder if I was as happy as I remember being? I wonder if I do these things to make it easier for me to shelter myself from my present by escaping back to the past. 

Perhaps there is no way of knowing how exactly things went down. No absolute truth but only multiple versions of it, commemorated in our minds. Maybe the flawed versions that we choose to remember, say more about us than the truth that came to pass. Maybe it's true what they say. Maybe we don't really remember what happened. Instead, what we remember becomes what happened.