Keep a journal.  Okay.  But it will be extremely intermittent.  Oh and, write down your stories about your life, is another oft heard sentence. If I'm reminiscing, I'm generally not writing.  My thoughts are, all too often, gone in a flash as they hurtle through my brain at 200 miles per hour.  I can only catch and pin down the few strands of smoke left trailing in their wake, (especially the rally interesting ones).  I can barely speak them fast enough at times, before they're shoved out by the next one along.  It's exhausting. Yet exhilarating at times. So we try.  I usually reckon I can think of something to remember at the suggestion  of any random word or thing.  So, a random book from the shelves next to me. 'Paolo Coelho's The Alchemist".  Random page - 79, random word, picked by pointing with closed eyes, obviously. "Conversations"  Okay, first conversation that took place did not in fact take place in the usual sense of the word.  Whilst living at the Headlands council-run children's home in Kettering, we kids were encouraged to try new skills and hobbies to keep us 'out of bother', and one of those suggestions was Karate.  The instructor brought his wife with him, she had a passing interest in us 'problem kids', (!), and one evening after a couple of weeks of lessons, said wife proposed something akin to a little seance-y type thing.  She said if we wanted to, we could sit in a dark room, and anyone who had any problems could 'talk' to her telepathically, and she would help where she could.  Challenge accepted!  

So, we sat in the darkened office of the children's home, in a circle.  Some sniggering, coughing and a couple of soft "hey!"s and silence prevailed.  Nothing happened.  She encouraged someone, anyone, to communicate with her.  I couldn't formulate the words to describe how I was feeling, so I let my emotions flow towards her, let loose like the floodgates crashing apart, (as they were), and I heard her audibly gasp.  She said she felt such a huge rush of rage, and hatred, fear and god-knows-what that she had to get out of that room.  Which she did.  She just stood up and rushed out, and when she saw me she knew it had come from me.  She was white, trembling and looked absolutely terrified.  Whether that was of me or just what she'd experienced I never found out which it was, as they did not come again.  It was my first inkling that there was something still in there.  I had not escaped unharmed at all.  I think what that poor woman felt was the inner monster of my own self-loathing.  Years and years of being told that one is useless, having it beaten into a person that they were the cause of everyone else's problems, to be made to feel so utterly worthless and dirty, it had clearly taken a toll.   Bigger than I ever realised, maybe I'm just beginning to see it more clearly now, more so than all those years ago.  It's grown over the years in some places, more shrivelled in others, but it's still lurking under the surface.  All the humiliation and disappointment too, and the awful decisions I've made that have been based on such internal feelings.  No wonder I've made s many hurtful mistakes, (each of which I truly regret).