For context: I’m a young adult, I don’t think I have any serious brain issues yet.
But I’ve recently been just trying to remember the past and although its kinda tragic, there are very interesting moments and I want to keep these memories forever.
But brains aren’t perfect, and I’m just so scared.
Even re-reading the events from a journal woudn’t exactly be the same as remembering it.
Idk, I’m kinda just obsessed with some memories for some reason. Don’t wanna let go of it. Having this “backstory” (for lack of a better term), is what drives me forward, without those memories, like if I get a concussion and forgot everything, I wouldn’t really be… well… “me” anymore, and the thought of that is terrifying.
Its not so bad. Just continue to be your best and continue to improve. Be nice. Be generous, kind, caring, charitable. Go out of your way sometimes to be good to people.
Ive had a few concussions, been knocked out a few times, and 1 traumatic brain injury. (Accident prone). I know im forgetting a bunch, but I cant remember what im forgetting, so it doesn’t really affect me generally.
Ive had a fairly eventful life, at times exciting life. Ive been around the world. Done missionary work in Mexico and Peru, helping an orphanage building a well, visiting a youth jail in Mexico. Sailed thd Amazon river bringing medicine/water/supplies/bibles to different villages on the Amazon river. Er…
Thats all to say, if youre a good person and do good things, people will remember and can remind you again later if you forget!
Its dangerous to live shitty acting shitty treating people like shit AND have a bad memory. If you forget who you were shitty to and not watching your back thats trouble. Better to just be remembered as a good guy.
Only one way to save them. Write a diary or a mini biography. Just pick some stories you like and write them down and they become permanent.
Yes, very much so. Everyone here talked at length about this already, but I remembered the book Flowers for Algernon, which, among several other more significant things in the book, talks about this.
I really recomend you read the book before this spoiler, since it kinda kills the moment.
the end of the book
At the very end of the book the main character knows only that they bring flowers to a grave everyday, but don’t remember who’s burried. And it’s one of the few moments media made me cry. because memory issues hit me really hard.
Memories fade.
Take tons of pictures and videos now. Make sure you have storage and backups.
When I was younger I didn’t like taking pictures.
When I got older and had kids I didn’t want to spend all my times taking pictures. We were “building memories” was my excuse.
Now all I have are memories, but those will disappear when I cease to exist. I don’t like that one bit.
I’m 51 and I have an astonishingly complete long term memory, I can remember parts of being 2 years old, and pretty much everything from age 4 onward. I mean not every single day in kindergarten or anything like that, but I have a pretty good grasp on what my daily life was like most of the time. I kept a friends only online blog for years, and when I’ve reread it, there’s only bits and pieces I don’t immediately remember, nothing significant, but when I read it I have good recall of what happened, it’s just not immediately on the surface of my mind.
My short term memory is sometimes iffy, it’s largely due to stress though from my violent ex, but it improves when I am feeling safer.
I think this is because I read so much.
I also think people who read have much better memory. I just dont know if its from reading, or because you have such good memory that it makes you enjoy reading.
For me, my memory is average. So I dont enjoy reading that much, because I will anyway forget most of it. Things like movies stay in my memory better.
Maybe its that simple. We like what we are good at.
You can get genetic testing for Alzheimers done; I lived with the Fear for many years until I got the testing done and found I didn’t have the gene… such a relief. I’m still a forgetful fuck though
Honestly, going through and getting therapy and doing the work nowadays, I’m more afraid of the ones I’ll find than the ones I’ll eventually lose.
yes and no.
I remember everything. well, I guess it’s better to say I remembered everything.
until 2020 I remembered everything and had a near 95% recall. after I got covid and stress/anxiety ate away at my sanity it’s more like 80% now. My age is also a factor.
remembering everything, every detail, did me more harm than good honestly. all the embarrassing moments in my life from my first class recital in kindergarten where I fucked up my lines to the time a hooked up with a “dead fish”.
I’m on the other side of my life now and most the crap I remember isn’t worth it.
there are some good memories I’d like to keep, but when I do finally forget them (and I will forget them), I won’t even know I forgot anything at all.
Sounds quite simple - if you are healthy, nothing to do. If you fear losing memories - write them down. Like, a diary or journal, but you now write down what happened in the past, how you saw it, how you experience it. That way you have memories written down. You can also over time re-read them and update and double check do you still remember them the same way you used to, or do your memories get “watered down” over time.
Write down your favorite ones, take pictures and get them PRINTED videos future you will thank you
Having this “backstory” (for lack of a better term), is what drives me forward, without those memories, like if I get a concussion and forgot everything, I wouldn’t really be… well… “me” anymore
Emotional memories is how we develop a sense of self. So if you are really attached to who you are then it will be terryfing to loose who you are.
But we can do really wacky stuff with our memories. We can delude ourselfs into makeing new false memories or misremembering them.
Also you constantly get new memories and change who you are, so you aren’t the same person as you were years ago.
I have grown up without that sense of self and I had to sculpt one from the ground up. So I am not really terrified of loosing the sens of self as I can make one once again. It will be different but it will still be ME.
if I get a concussion and forgot everything, I wouldn’t really be… well… “me” anymore
I get what you mean by this. It’s been my theory for a while that your memories are “you”, so it’s no longer “you” if you lose even half of your memories. You’re an entirely different person. Everything that we are, are contained in these memories. If you cloned a person then automatically, they will be a different person from the start. Simply because the memories they make will be different and are no longer identical. It’s why I think if someone loses their memories through diseases like Alzheimer’s or dementia, it’s no longer “them”.
Hell, every time you go to sleep, you will wake up an entirely different person. Ship of Theseus style. Your memories and even the cells in your body are slowly being replaced by new ones. So… in a way, every single second of our life, we are no longer the “me” that we were and we are now someone else.
Hi. Apparantly the “Yesterday-Me” made this post. What an intetedting post, this “Yesterday-Me” person seems like a very smart person, unfortunately his reign has ended, and it’s time for MY REIGN (for the rest of this day).
And it’s time to make pineapple pizzas illegal!! Lol. I wouldn’t worry so much about your memories. Other folks in here have suggested some good methods to keep track of things. Journaling, photography, art, these are all great ways to keep track of your memories! I used to write about my dreams after I had them so I’d remember and what surprised me was how I had completely forgotten them when I reread my journal.
It was like I reading something written by someone else entirely!
Memories are not permanent, it’s not their nature.
Separating sewage and drinking water wasn’t “natural” either. Its natural to live short miserables lives before modern medicine. “Natural” doesn’t mean I have to just accept it and never figtht back against the cruelty of nature.
Nature is being a bitch for trying to take away what I cherish. Fuck nature.
Mate, I look at it this way: if you’ve forgotten your memory, how would you know that you’ve lost it? You’ld just carry on.
This makes it even more terrifying. If I had uncurable dementia I’d probably just commit suicide. Much better than rotting away forgetting all my loved ones, and eventually forgetting who I am.
Maybe a geriatrician can chime in, but I’m not so sure people with late stage dementia even know they have dementia. Not arguing that it’s scary from the outside though. Even in their 40s, some people start becoming aware they’re forgetting stuff, or at least not having the data available at hand. E.g. takes more time to find words that used to be second nature.
I know that I lost most of the memories of my childhood, because I barely remember any of it.
Well, I can remember a lot of it with the right prompts, just can’t recall at will. Yay ADHD!
I think most people can’t just replay their childhood at will. I’ve recently been talking to my siblings a lot (and have also previously had similar conversations with my spouse about our history) and am often told that they’re very impressed by the scope of my memory.
However, the stories I recall to them aren’t just memories that I sought out and retrieved. They’re things that I was reminded of by the path of our conversations (or other external stimuli) - what you might call prompts.
If you were to browse my comment history, you would see a similar phenomenon: I tell lots of anecdotes and they are (at least in my eyes) relevant to the conversation, but for many of those stories, I didn’t have them immediately available. Instead they were summoned by the comment thread.
edit: Maybe this is an ADHD thing. That said, while I’m almost certainly neurodivergent, I’ve never been diagnosed with ADHD and don’t believe I have it. However, it’s not impossible and I don’t mean to invalidate your perspective, just provide mine.
I do not remember the name of a song that I listened to in the early 2010s, but I remember vague details. So yes, you can know you lost a memory.
Monk thought, monk didn’t remember…
I’m not sure that doesn’t make prospect even more terrifying.
Start journaling now.
Yeah… I told myself to start a year ago…
Maybe I’ll start tomorrow…
You pick up the journal you bought last year. It’s been sitting on the shelf since you lost interest 11 months ago. You had hoped it would be a way to reassure yourself in the face of eternity. But, what’s this… The book is almost full, and the last entry is dated yesterday.
Brb, gonna go out to look for John G
This. Reading what you personally write is really good for recalling the related memories. Doing it often will strengthen the connection.
My mom was put out for a big surgery, and she still has memory holes and foggy bits from the anesthetic and the morphine beforehand. If made her previous memories foggy and impairs new memory formation. So she’s a little fuddy, but it’s improving.
