feels like amnesia

I have this ability to self induce vomiting. I just imagine the bile rising in my throat as I attempt to brace myself.

Funny how the simple picture accompanied by a thought could produce a bodily reaction. I guess not that amazing, considering we are trained to relieve ourselves on command.

I think I developed my vomiting trick in my school days as a convienient excuse to missing days, and it has served me well in time off from work as well.

Many years ago I first became aware of Munchausen Syndrome.
Named for Baron von Munchausen, an 18th century German officer who was known for embellishing the stories of his life and experiences, it is the most severe type of factitious disorder.
Most of the symptoms in people with Munchausen Syndrome are related to physical illness -- symptoms such as chest pain, stomach problems or fever -- rather than those of a mental disorder.

Munchausen syndrome is a factitious disorder, a mental illness in which a person repeatedly acts as if he or she has a physical or mental illness when he or she is not really sick. Munchausen syndrome is considered a mental illness because it is associated with severe emotional difficulties.

(There is a great website located at : http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Marc_Feldman_2/
which explains Munchausen Sydrome and other Fictitious Disorders in more detail)

I use to wake up in the morning and tell myself that 'today is gonna be a great day' and 'I am feeling fine' and 'life is great'.
The problem was that I knew it wasn't true.

The whole self deception thing only works if you can really convince yourself (ie: why psycopaths pass lie detector tests). For me, I never believed I was fine. I was only trying hard to because I knew if I believed it then I wouldn't just want to kill myself at the end of the day.

What needed to happen seemed beyond my ability of will alone. I needed circumstances to transform my immediate situation into an opportunity to make better choices.

We can talk all we want about change, but change means becoming a differant person.
This is why so many of us will never really change. We want differant, but we don't want it to cost us anything. We don't want to give up the things that secure us to who we don't want to be anymore.

Memories are fascinating. I recently heard a pannel of scientists talking about memories in relation to hypnosis. What they said amounted to this:
The more you describe something, the more you remember your desription. Your description becomes your memory, and the more you believe that your description really happened.

They were dicussing how hypnosis is not the best method for remembering your past because of the obvious flaws in memory creation.

Standing in the midst of change as it is happening feels a lot like amnesia.
It may be easy to train our bodies to relieve ourselves, but it was not always easy, as I am sure our parents could contend. It is even possible to train ourself to vomit, especially when we are rewarded by a day off for our efforts.
So, could it have been possible to talk myself out of depression? Was I really dependant on an external change or could I have made that completely of my own accord? Perhaps external change was just the placebo to put my positive will into play.

I wonder how long it will take for me to feel like I have gained my memories back. I am not sure I want them back. They seem better off belonging to a person I use to know before the world colapsed and I learned that to grow into someone new would require differance, and that only through differance, could change find completion.