Twilight Children

ataxia, which refers to a lack of coordination in certain muscles

It’s time to open up the door on the Troubled Place and clean all that junk out. Not to throw it away, because those are part of your memories, part of what makes you ‘you.’ But it’s time to make them ordinary. To talk about them until you understand how you felt, what you did, what other people did. To talk about them until there aren’t any secrets left in your Troubled Place to stay fresh and scary, to talk until you’re bored with them. That will turn them into just ordinary memories, like all the rest of the memories of your life.”

When you first do it, first create a Troubled Place and manage to get it locked up, it’s easy to think you’ve made it go away. But, in fact, this is the weird thing about Troubled Places. Just the opposite is true. A Troubled Place works just like a freezer does. Everything you put in there, it keeps really fresh, like it’s just happened. So if you accidentally crack open the door on the Troubled Place and look at anything that’s in there, that thing will hurt horribly all over again.”

Talking helps our minds to organize what happened—helps us understand how it occurred and how we felt and what we did. Sort of like you have a big laundry basket full of clean washing, sitting in the middle of your bedroom floor. It takes up lots of room. You see it every time you come in your room and maybe you’ll trip over it, if you aren’t watching out. But if you organize it—fold all the towels, roll up the socks—then you can put everything away neatly. Talking does that for our thoughts. It lets us put away things that have happened to us, so that they aren’t in the way every time we are thinking.