powerless over memories
Gately’s also powerless over memories of the older-type lady that had been their neighbor when he and his mother shared bed and board with the M.P.
Context
The program's First-Step word turned inward on the past: sober in a hospital bed, Gately discovers that the same powerlessness he had to admit over the Substance now extends to memory itself, which surfaces unbidden and cannot be refused. Using kept the childhood anesthetized; recovery strips the anesthetic off, and the shame he never mourned — the shunned neighbor, the house he shared with his mother's batterer — comes back on its own schedule, not his.