Remembering too much

I recently told a friend that sometimes I think I might remember too much.

This is a complicated statement, so let me briefly try to explain.

Part of it is that I remember more content than the average person. Not always, of course, but often. There is typically more substance to things that I remember than other people remember from the same experience. If I remember it at all, I often remember it very vividly.

On the same note, part of it is that I remember the emotions related to the experience, which are sometimes fantastic and sometimes harrowing.

An entirely different part of it, though, is that I spend a lot of time remembering. Some of that is just because when I have down time and can't read a book or play a game (for example, at work or in the car), I remember. Another reason is that I still have such strong emotions about events and periods in my past. And I guess probably the biggest reason right now is that I have very few specific hopes or plans for my future. I'm not depressed. Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not hopeless about my future. I just tend not to really think about it, shrug it off. God's got this. That's good enough for me.

So I remember a lot, a lot of the time. I went through some pretty great and some pretty hurtful times in my youth, and I had some very beautiful and very painful relationships. I think about them. I wouldn't say I'm entrenched in the past or so nostalgic I can't enjoy the present. But I do remember a lot. (Did I already mention that?)

It came up because talking to this particular friend brought up all sorts of memories from my childhood in Nigeria, and I started just spouting off all these images. I don't often get a chance to wax eloquent about my young years. And I am full to bursting with memories. I told her it's hard to blog about anything besides my past. If I thought others would be willing to read it, I would choose to write about events or images from my past (mostly my childhood & adolescence but also my young adult years) 90% of the time.

So I think I remember too much--the bad and the good, and more often than is perhaps "normal." What does one do with all these memories?