Dreams and memories

[Priestess]

They say people can't remember anything from before they were 3 years old. In my case, the beginning of my definate memories was closer to 4, starting in the place we stayed after the doctors apparently did their thing to me. I was always unable to remember more, though sometimes I'd have a mental image with no time sequencing attached to it. And sometimes I've dreamed.

Not just any dreams, only a very few that I had while sleeping during one of my migraine headaches. I haven't always been troubled with migraines, for me they link to my estrogen level and are almost a recent thing. The only other time when I was subject to them was between 9 and 13, which makes me wonder if I had a high estrogen level then too.

The dreams themselves had been crystal clear, as though I were seeing things from my waking eyes, and my being fairly lucid. I could not act, these only seemed to be replaying events. Nothing unrealistic or dream like, being very mundane except for two things. The first was that I could not hear, and the second that everyone else seemed to be giants.

I'm somewhat of a sceptic and I usually attach the most likely sounding explanation to things, though lately those rationalizations have often been wrong. For these dreams, I said to myself that it must be a sort of strange hallucination brought on by the migraines. And the experiences were good to have, because they always cancelled the migraine instead of my having to suffer for 3 days.

But then last weekend I went to my grandfather's funeral, which was a sad occasion despite some very friendly distant relatives who I never usually got a chance to see. Though some of them were wondering where they got the extra granddaughter from, most of them were uncommonly accepting and didn't even need to ask, almost as if they'd known something for a long time.

Anyways, we took a sidetrip to the house I'd lived in as an infant. My parents moved out shortly before I was 2 years old, and never went back or visited the place. And ... that was exactly the place in two of my hyper- realistic migraine dreams. Seeming almost a complete match of details, except that the neighboring houses appeared to be slightly modernized, and the street had been widened to handle more traffic.

So now I wonder about the distinction between memories and dreams, and the meaning of why my subconcious apparently made such an amazing effort of bringing back pieces of my earliest past. How was this possible in the first place? when the developmental psychologists say 3 years old is the beginning of memory. Now I have more questions than I started with.

Sorry for rambling, good day to you all.