Anemoia

There is much of my life I have forgotten. The memories I have kept are fairly vivid... but they are a drop of a bucket considering that I am a middle-aged adult.

A reason I don't trust my memory is that I have huge holes in my history. When asked what my first memory is, I cannot answer the question. I simply don't know it. Most of my other memories were carefully constructed from my family's narrative or the handful of photos I have of my childhood. The narratives seem to range from the plausible to the odd and almost mystical. I assume the latter stories are lies, but cannot think of why they were even told. To hide an abusive behavior? Superstitions?

I have a six-year-old daughter who I've watched for the entirety of her life, wondering if I did anything she does now. She's a Gestalt learner, and now I wonder if I was too. I feel her language came from me though. I know her sensory issues with eating are mine. But in every other regard, she closely resembles my husband's childhood or is too young to confirm that she shares other commonalities with me. For example, I have level 5 Aphantasia. I don't remember a time in my life when my mind saw anything beyond an inky darkness. Or the blaze of orange when I turned my closed eyes to the warm sun. I only realized that this attribute of mine had a label recently. I assumed that everyone was like me and that reports of seeing things beyond dreams didn't mean anything. She might be like me in this regard. Perhaps I will find out in the next few years.

Sometimes I wonder if the Aphantasia is what causes part of my amnesia. If I cannot conjure a person or a place, I feel that a point of attachment becomes severed. I might be wrong because I haven't experienced the world in both ways, but it seems like a fairly logical assumption. I grieve sometimes for this. To see my mother sometimes, or an old friend, or a beloved place. Sometimes I worry I value nothing as I should. That a lifetime of leaving and forgetting made me a ghost of sorts. I have often left relationships based on logic ("What's the point, we've grown apart" or "I annoy my friend anyway, why torture them with my presence?"). I cannot form true habits, making me more prone to dropping things if they seem to not adhere to my internal logic. I wish I could form memories, and I wish I could bond long enough with others to let them hold some of them together with me. But beyond a temporary and sharp pain on the goodbyes, I forget too easily. I don't work hard enough to maintain bonds. People would not believe that due to my contradicting attribute, people-pleasing. But the more I fade, the more memories I give up, and the more the delicate bonds I treasure fritter away in the wind.