This is one of those facts that never bothered me because I was already keenly aware of it. I can only recall about maybe ten percent of my childhood memories at all, and some of those memories I only remember what happened and how it made me feel but there's no visual or auditory memory to go with it.
This is because of a combo of ADHD and the fact I was such a sensitive child from being autistic and empathic that I spent most of my childhood until my teenage years blotting out reality with an intensely powerful fantasy world in my head. I did know the difference between reality and fantasy, I just rejected reality and substituted my own, until shifts in my teen years dragged me kicking and screaming back into reality (mostly).
Now as an adult I think I remember maybe thirty-five to forty percent of my teenage and adult life. Though the memories I do have are not in any kind of chronological order; it's like they're all tossed in the junk drawer and if what I'm looking for isn't right on top of the pile, I have to go digging for it. And I seem to be better able to retain information about books I've read, TV shows and movies I've seen, and other things from media. I keep stumbling upon things from my past that show my personality has tended to shift around quite a lot as older memories get lost in the junk drawer of my brain, to the point where who I am is best defined as a hurricane in a brain, IE defined more by the pattern of chaos in my head than by any kind of order.
To give you a clue about how that can feel at times, there have been times in the past where I went from feeling very vehemently about something in one direction or another, to feeling the opposite months later and I can't for the life of me remember either why I felt so strongly before the change or why the change happened. But in some cases I remember that the change happened in a very short time, like in some cases just like around 20 or 30 minutes from one extreme to the other. Again, with no idea at all why the change happened or why I was so vehement before the change. And I know of at least one set of viewpoints that changed abruptly like that twice in the span of several years. And the main thing is I only remember these shifts because of the evidence left in social media, blog posts, and files found on my computer.
Such shifts can also occur on a shorter-term basis, like for instance I might suddenly lose a key understanding about something that I had which results in my suddenly switching from believing something to disbelieving it or just being confused, and then either I have to have the thing re-explained by someone I trust, or I have to wait for the understanding to return on its own. It can make me seem like a troll sometimes but AFAIK nearly every single time it happens it's a legitimate belief or confusion, just one based on one of these unpredictable memory shifts.
Thankfully the larger-scale ones seem to be rare, and the short-scale ones tend to eventually shift back into place as the memory at its foundation floats back up to the surface again. And so my core beliefs tend to stay the same over time. Though this instability is one reason why I write so many posts retreading the same ideas in my social media / blogs, because then the memory is reinforced and it stays afloat.
So like, compared to me, everyone else's memory is effectively photographic. I've lost count of the number of times someone has brought up things that they and I talked about at some point in the past that I just don't remember at all. I often say, in response to this, "I don't remember that, but that sounds like something I'd say," or something similar to indicate I don't remember it but I trust their memory more than my own.
Though I might not have become aware of having to say that so much if not for my last roommate, who seemed to be chronically incapable of understanding that I have memory issues no matter how many times I reminded her, because every time we would have a moment like that, she would respond by accusing me of gaslighting her. When the truth was "No, I just have a shitty memory and you don't." I got very tired of constantly having that argument with her. It was so annoying for so long that I don't think the memory of that pattern of mine is going to go away anytime soon, because every time that "I don't remember that, but sounds like something I'd say" kind of exchange begins with someone else, I get flashbacks to that annoying former roommate.
Anyway yeah, even for someone with ADHD, my memory is garbage.
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dancing_serpent
(no subject)
Date: 2024-08-12 06:47 am (UTC)This is because of a combo of ADHD and the fact I was such a sensitive child from being autistic and empathic that I spent most of my childhood until my teenage years blotting out reality with an intensely powerful fantasy world in my head. I did know the difference between reality and fantasy, I just rejected reality and substituted my own, until shifts in my teen years dragged me kicking and screaming back into reality (mostly).
Now as an adult I think I remember maybe thirty-five to forty percent of my teenage and adult life. Though the memories I do have are not in any kind of chronological order; it's like they're all tossed in the junk drawer and if what I'm looking for isn't right on top of the pile, I have to go digging for it. And I seem to be better able to retain information about books I've read, TV shows and movies I've seen, and other things from media. I keep stumbling upon things from my past that show my personality has tended to shift around quite a lot as older memories get lost in the junk drawer of my brain, to the point where who I am is best defined as a hurricane in a brain, IE defined more by the pattern of chaos in my head than by any kind of order.
To give you a clue about how that can feel at times, there have been times in the past where I went from feeling very vehemently about something in one direction or another, to feeling the opposite months later and I can't for the life of me remember either why I felt so strongly before the change or why the change happened. But in some cases I remember that the change happened in a very short time, like in some cases just like around 20 or 30 minutes from one extreme to the other. Again, with no idea at all why the change happened or why I was so vehement before the change. And I know of at least one set of viewpoints that changed abruptly like that twice in the span of several years. And the main thing is I only remember these shifts because of the evidence left in social media, blog posts, and files found on my computer.
Such shifts can also occur on a shorter-term basis, like for instance I might suddenly lose a key understanding about something that I had which results in my suddenly switching from believing something to disbelieving it or just being confused, and then either I have to have the thing re-explained by someone I trust, or I have to wait for the understanding to return on its own. It can make me seem like a troll sometimes but AFAIK nearly every single time it happens it's a legitimate belief or confusion, just one based on one of these unpredictable memory shifts.
Thankfully the larger-scale ones seem to be rare, and the short-scale ones tend to eventually shift back into place as the memory at its foundation floats back up to the surface again. And so my core beliefs tend to stay the same over time. Though this instability is one reason why I write so many posts retreading the same ideas in my social media / blogs, because then the memory is reinforced and it stays afloat.
So like, compared to me, everyone else's memory is effectively photographic. I've lost count of the number of times someone has brought up things that they and I talked about at some point in the past that I just don't remember at all. I often say, in response to this, "I don't remember that, but that sounds like something I'd say," or something similar to indicate I don't remember it but I trust their memory more than my own.
Though I might not have become aware of having to say that so much if not for my last roommate, who seemed to be chronically incapable of understanding that I have memory issues no matter how many times I reminded her, because every time we would have a moment like that, she would respond by accusing me of gaslighting her. When the truth was "No, I just have a shitty memory and you don't." I got very tired of constantly having that argument with her. It was so annoying for so long that I don't think the memory of that pattern of mine is going to go away anytime soon, because every time that "I don't remember that, but sounds like something I'd say" kind of exchange begins with someone else, I get flashbacks to that annoying former roommate.
Anyway yeah, even for someone with ADHD, my memory is garbage.