[ccrush]

As a person who used to have total recall, count yourself blessed. Aside from ruining intimate, family, professional, and casual relationships by trivially quoting and correcting hypocrisy verbatim, and having an encyclopedia of cringe that keeps me from sleeping in peace and being a wreck when I get to address a crowd or do anything else that can make me the center of attention, I have to say that the most intense way in which you have a sense of loss and mortality comes from the realization that you are losing your gift and your mind is always filling in the memory gaps and you have a lifetime of knowing that you will find the perfect answer to the question of how you remember the past and instead of the answers you seek being unknown to you, you have invented a particular piece of history that never happened. It hurts and you have to be careful not to make a mistake and writing down important things is something that I started doing in my 40s. For all of my education, I remembered everything and never relied on notes. I finished a bachelor's degree and I never had a notebook. Just a calender. Fun fact: calendars are like an table of contents that point me to information. Another fun fact: I don't make a clear distinction between me and other people speaking, and have an easy time extracting and storing meaning from conversation or lecture or videos with info.

[arbitrage]

> Aside from ruining intimate, family, professional, and casual relationships by trivially quoting and correcting hypocrisy verbatim, and having an encyclopedia of cringe that keeps me from sleeping in peace and being a wreck when I get to address a crowd or do anything else that can make me the center of attention

The thing that helped me cope and move on with my life was realizing that nobody lives in the past like this with me. They forget and move on, but I'm the only one keeping that little bubble of reality alive inside of me. It's like being the last player in a video game dungeon -- when you exit the game, the dungeon despawns.

It turns out our day-to-day realities with other people are extremely mutable. The vast majority of humanity does not cling to an excruciatingly objective past reality, it's much fuzzier for them. In a way, you can sort of just pretend you belong and join them in that weird fuzzy changeable world they live in. The rules are made up, and the points don't matter, to quote from the popular American/British gameshow "Whose Line is it Anyway?".

[quacked]

That's fascinating. It must be so frustrating to exist in a world where everyone you talk to is constantly hallucinating alternate versions of the past, and you're living the real version of it.

[jaggederest]

For me, anyway, it's really more subtle than that: aside from records, photos, or notes, there's no way I can check my own memory, and it's definitely not perfect - it's just better than anyone else I have known. So there's an element of "Well I know you don't remember it, but do I remember it right?" - and at some point you just have to shrug and move on.

Reminding other people of things isn't as bad as the true confabulists though, you're right in that regard - it's not even intentional, your brain just fills in the gaps, I know, but it still feels like being gaslit a little bit.

[jacquesm]

This hits so close to home it hurts. But thank you for posting it anyway.

[Llamamoe]

I'm not blessed, I have severe cognitive decline due to a combo of several health issues.