I am intimately familiar with this scenario, having visited a number of forums and partaken in a number of internet-based discussions over the years.

But as much as I hate being the recipient of such wrath, nothing is more upsetting that catching yourself in the act of trying to smite someone else in a similar fashion. A trap that my religious beliefs made easier to fall in to, and still do if I don’t remind myself of such things.

“It was hard to read because I seemed like such a helpless little worm, wrestling with feelings and ideas I couldn’t resolve. I felt like I could see finally see myself in the way other people might have seen me, petty, lost, tone deaf, and insignificantly small.”

Good lord, this reminds me of the day I found a small stack of old love poems. Ug. The horrors I experienced that day…

But even though it’s true that by seeing such a thing you catch a glimpse of what others saw in you, even then it is not the whole picture they experienced. A letter, casual comment or small event taken out of context can make anyone seem less than the sum of their parts.

It’s that knowledge that saves me from self-loathing whenever I think of certain… unpleasantness in my life.

As to writing from memory, you have some fascinating thoughts there. My own memory is so terrible that my life seems to be sometimes half-built from what others tell me about what happened when. It is like I’m living off of a belief in a mythology built to explain my own past self.