the barrier of speaking the same language

"Negotiating with memories isn't easy: how to choose between those panting to be told, those still ripening, those already shrivelling, and those destined to be mangled by language and come out pulverised?" - Steve Toltz, "A Fraction of the Whole"

The more I consider it, the more I find that memory itself can be singularly catastrophic. Now, to begin with, memory is never neatly layered like a German chocolate cake: it is all jumbled up, so the past is always present. Some may have even passed off wordless bitterness as peace, sacrifice as compromise, hypocrisy as flexibility in a person, love as a unsuspecting existence of vulnerability. More than that, memory is so insubstantial compared to one's shrinking, compressed, infinitely dense emotional insurance. I, for one, have been convinced long enough.

Watching memory from an outsider's perspective, I believe it is almost soul-destroying and stultifying to say that experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And now, my only question -- do we negotiate with memories in such untimely manner?