For an alien abductee, this movie is seriously creepy. It comes frighteningly close to what actually happens to the memories of people who’ve been abducted by aliens.
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind is classed as a romantic, science fiction comedy, which hit the big screen in 2004. Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet hold the roles of star-crossed lovers who want to forget one another, with Kirsten Dunst and Elijah Wood as being party to the memory erasure procedure.
The love story revolves around the turbulent relationship of two wayward souls who grow tired of each other, become irritated with one another, and just want to end the relationship once and for all. Their relationship is the epitome of “familiarity breeds contempt.” What a great life they’d have away from each other, if only they could forget.
Enter Lacuna Inc., the company that makes this great new life possible. Lacuna specializes in the art of erasing specific memories, in a procedure designed to take place mostly while you are sleeping in your own bed. When you wake up, all of the unwanted memories are gone, along with every piece of evidence that the person was ever in your life.
Lacuna, Inc. was named for “lacunar amnesia,” which refers to a gap in your memory about a specific event. How apt a name, especially for alien abductees. UFO aliens have some way of ensuring that your memories of them are erased, or overwritten. How they achieve this selective memory erasure is the stuff of science fiction, just like the movie portrays.
Maybe the UFO aliens erase your memories, or bury them so deeply that they never see the light of day. Maybe they move the memory in some way, to join memories of early infancy, far out of your reach.
You might remember what happened just before their arrival, or immediately after their departure. Sometimes you’ll even have singular flashes of resurfacing memories — flashbacks of the UFO alien abduction.
Maybe they overwrite the memory with a very different memory. What you actually see: a gray alien. What you remember seeing: an owl, deer, dog, cat, cow, or even a spider. You remember seeing something completely normal, though it may appear in an abnormal setting. All of it is wrapped in the cocoon of a night dream, so that when you wake up, you explain it away as just a scary bad dream or nightmare.
None of this even occurred to me for most of the movie, in spite of the similarities. The movie is strange from the outset, taking you on a bizarre journey which is sometimes hard to follow. Stick with it and you’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll grip the nearest pillow, and squeeze your lover’s hand. You never know what’s coming next.
It left a pit in my stomach at the end of the movie, when I realized that what happened to the young couple’s memories, also happened to me, in real life. Being abducted by aliens leaves you exactly the way the fictional characters in the movie ended up.
If at some point you become aware that it’s happening, and try as hard as you can to remember, and fight whatever procedure they are using to erase it, the end result is probably similar to Jim Carrey in the sequence where he’s trying to hold onto some seed of the memory. He was laying in bed with a contraption over his head, and doctors in the room clicking a keyboard to control the contraption, which was erasing the memories one by one. He was fleeing from the erasure, in his mind — No! Stop! I don’t want to forget!
At some point, you become aware that there is something to remember, but no matter how hard you try, you may never be able to call it back up. Even if you succeed, you can never be sure how much of the memory is real, how much has been overwritten as a screen memory, or fake memory that the aliens imposed over the real ones.
Even if you try regressive hypnosis, there is no guarantee that what emerges is an exact match for what actually happened on board the UFO. Your personal reality will never be as crystal clear as “normal humans” who’ve never been abducted, or suffered physical, mental or emotional trauma that impedes their ability to remember their life.
For a look inside what one alien abductee remembers, without the aid of regressive hypnosis, my personal story is told in Alien Nightmares: Screen Memories of UFO Alien Abductions. You can even get it as an audiobook, narrated personally by me. In other words, it’s as if I am in the room with you, telling you my personal story.
Whether you end up believing that I genuinely was abducted by aliens, countless times over a period of decades, or whether you’re an unbeliever who scoffs at UFOs abducting humans, one thing you probably will not doubt — my sincerity.
I was 21 and pregnant with my son when I had an encounter I only remembered about 15 years later, and when I say remember I mean remember that there was an encounter, but I dont remember any details.
I was reading a book about the Rosswell incident when the memory suddenly flashed through my mind. It was almost as if a dark curtain was opened up for a few seconds and I could see the light (memory) and then it shut closed again.
So here is what I remember of that night.
My sister and I was walking to a nearby restaurant where we both worked. It was about 9pm at night. I remember approaching the building and seeing this massive object in the sky, pointing it out to my sister. I think we asked each other what we thought it was and I remember my sister saying it must be a plane or helicopter (ridiculous because it was huge). I remember saying that it was too big and silent to be a plane or anything… when I tried to remember the only memory is of something so massive it is like something I’ve never seen before and I remember a fluid-like object and a smell so clean and pure, like nothing I’ve ever smelled before. And it was silent. Simply hanging there.
And thats the last thing I remember of that night. I dont know what we did afterwards. Dont remember anything. I dont think we ever spoke about it afterwards. For the past ten years I’ve been trying to remember but it is like you said, I simply cannot recall anything. Its like an invisible hand wiping the memories away even before I recall them.
I always think people who recall abductions etc in detail must be lying or exaggerating for I cannot for the life of me remember what I did after seeing that object. Its gone.
My son is convinced he is different. I dont argue much about that…
I keep reading up about encounters in the hope that it will trigger my memories but it seems the more I read and try to remember the deeper my own memories get buried/pushed down into oblivion