[crucialfelix]

I met an artist in New York who had her studio in a basement and got, I think, Mercury poisoning and lost her memory. She told me that she had all these photographic prints and she doesn't remember making any of them, but they're hers, so she was mounting a gallery show with them.

She seemed strangely relaxed about it so I almost didn't believe her. Maybe she had just dealt with enough already.

Just an anecdote for you.

If it is painful for you to relearn then you might consider changing to a different field. But you'll know yourself better if that's worth the start up time. Probably the knowledge will come back after you push through the resistance.

[Tabula_Rasa]

I found a bunch of old love-letters in my house, kind of like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I thought they were kind of funny, so I can be relaxed about it :)

That sounds like a pretty different experience though. Honestly the best way to explain it that I can think of, is imagine that you used to be some Gold Metal Olympic runner, and now you're fully paralyzed and slowly recovering. It's just humiliating and frustrating to take these baby steps when you know that you have this past standard to look up to. You want to be happy for your friends, who are running local races, even jogging, but seeing them pass you by while you're still just hobbling is so, so, painful.

The different field is a really possible idea. I guess I'm just hindered by the fact that I apparently enjoyed my job, I was good at it, and I still have a lot of technical knowledge that wormed itself into procedural memory...I could find jobs well suited for me and jobs that were flexible, and I was intellectually stimulated. I don't know if I could say that for other jobs.

I don't know if the memory will "come back" as such, but from past experience I've been a lot faster picking old things up. Just getting past this block is what's hard.

[trifalte]

Part of it is learning to forgive yourself and another part is framing your situation in the right light. Essentially, you may no longer be up to gold medal standards and that's ok because that's just for now. It's also perfectly ok to be frustrated. But then you have to to think about whether you are doing well for where you are now because that's what matters.

You can also try picturing it as a treasure hunt. You have buried all this hidden treasure (technical knowledge), but the map you left yourself got washed in the laundry so now you have to go around piecing it together, but hey, every once in awhile, there is treasure!