Memory (no, not that Memory)

How do you remember, is it all in one go
Memories on display like paintings, all in a row
I don’t know

-me, “Can’t”

Normal

I spend a lot of time comparing my capabilities with those of other people. It typically ends with me wondering why I don’t seem to live up to the standards of “normal” I see around me. It’s discouraging, even though I know perfectly well that there is a wide range of possible proficiencies at every task, and in most cases, I’m not at either extreme. Besides, “normal” is an inherently ridiculous concept.

Nevertheless, there are plenty of areas in which it feels especially difficult to cope with my apparent failings, and one of those areas… is memory.

Various mental disorders have interactions with various aspects of memory and deficits therein. I won’t go into which and why, particularly, because – I’m going to be honest here – there are a lot of moving parts and it’s difficult for me to hold them all in my head as I learn more about each one. Which is, in fact, something I am going to go into. Actually, why don’t I make it the first thing I write down in this rundown of my memory struggles?

Juggling

I often feel like a not-very-skilled juggler¹ when I try to think. I’ll be sure I had three points to make but then it turns out one of them has disappeared behind the couch. Or I will be on the verge of grasping how two concepts relate when they bounce off each other and head in opposite directions. I have to write everything down to keep track of it. The trick then, of course, is to keep track of where and what I’ve written. I dream of an automatically updated card catalog that I use to look up where I wrote down what I’m trying to remember. Of course, even then, I have to remember that I actually wrote something down in the first place.

Hooks

As a singer, I know lots of songs. At least, I think I probably do. At least, I should. But often, when I go to start singing one, I can’t come up with how the first line goes. I regularly end up, in my head, starting at the hook²and working forwards or backwards until I come to the start of a verse and my memory catches. I can usually remember the whole song, more or less, once I remember how it starts, like a bike chain catching the gear. But sometimes I just stay there, spinning the pedals in my head, trying to find something to grab onto. I live in fear of doing a performance someday and suddenly needing Adam to hum a a few bars of the melody so that I can make it into the song.

Work

If I don’t do something regularly, I might as well never have done it before. This is an enormous problem, as you might imagine, when it comes to the less-frequent tasks in a work environment. I have to relearn how to do a thing every time I do it, unless it comes up regularly. When I was working in retail, I absolutely dreaded returns.³ It wasn’t that the process was particularly complicated, but it was infrequent enough that I completely forgot how to do it in between returns. And while someone might be patient with a brand-new employee who is just learning how to use the cash, I suspect that patience would not extend to the person they’ve been seeing there for weeks or months. I was a wreck every time. Nowadays, I have several tasks that I cycle through on an annual basis. Which means that each season brings something new to be unfamiliar with yet again.

How Does It Feel?

How does it feel to have metaphorical holes in my brain? For one thing, disappointing. I think I used to have a better memory, although lately I’ve been questioning that thought. But regardless of how reliable or unreliable my memory was in childhood, it’s certainly less reliable than I expect it to be. It also feels embarrassing. I look at people who can remember not only what happened previously on their favourite TV shows but also the name of the episode it happened in, and I can’t help but feel self-conscious. I can hardly seem to remember what happened in the episode I just watched. Most of all, it feels like kind of a bit of a headache.

On good days, I like the idea that there will always be someone who finds things easier than you do, and there will always be someone who finds them harder. On bad days, I can’t remember that I think that.

—

¹ Fun fact: I am actually a not-very-skilled juggler! Despite the efforts of my cousin and my high school drama teacher, who are both very skilled jugglers, to teach me, I am hopelessly uncoordinated.

² If you don’t know the term, the hook is the really catchy part of a song, especially a pop song, usually appearing in the chorus, that everyone always thinks of when they think of the song. It’s often the title of the song, too.

³ For a number of reasons.