The memory gaps are very small. Piecemeal. You could even argue there are moments of slippage in object permanence. I could, at any rate. A thing is moved (I moved it, mere moments before) and when I return to search for it, the briefest of panics. Of course then its actual position in a room is recalled.
But still. The backpack being moved, at lunch. The name of a known actor, from a favourite film attached to an old memory (Lily Tomlin, Dolly Parton, and....? not Dabney Coleman. who's the third female lead, asshole) that I rewatched within the past year. When a co-worker looks up the cast, I'm stunned to realize the third was Jane Fonda. But I knew that.
But I knew that.
Past. Tense.
Sig watches the memory gapping. He watches in realtime. I fumble over my plate at dinner, during what should be as simple as an evening out, groping 'round in the dustbin of my mind for the very small number of times a wild bird has been in my hands. He reminds me. He tells me he will be my memory.
It's kind, and loving, and more than I deserve. And it scares the fuck out of me that this is happening.
I'm okay. I just had to say all this out loud. I'm trying to not be scared of it. It's what it is.
In the park, days ago, I happen into a new friend. Someone Sig & I have gotten to know over the past year. He speaks about recent events, people, places. The entire time, I cannot remember his name. We part without my having spoken his name once. Not uncommon; I don't address people by their names often, in conversation. I might have to change that.
Only after I'm walking home does the name "Bruce" occur to me, followed by his partner's. But even that blessing comes with a withdrawal, because when I was fumbling through the whole talk with Bruce, I was straining to trigger memory by association: yet Jared was a blank, too.
I'm nearly 49.
There were three days in a row at work where I kept misremembering the day of the week. My co-workers watch me stop, stare into the middle distance, glitch out. They see me falter & prompt myself.
I'm not going to lie. I am scared. I type this entry, then go back to edit, to fill in the lapsed details. I'm making myself remember when I couldn't remember things. I'm worried that there will come a point where this nervousness becomes a feedback loop.
That could be decades, or years, or months from now. Could be.
The sane thing to do would be to go to a specialist & have a workup done. Get some tests, scans, all that cool sci-fi shit medicine can do in 2025 that didn't exist when I was born, in '76. But y'know, that shit costs a lot of money. And I'm still uninsured. And still in (relative) poverty. And even if I could afford it, the tests might prove inconclusive. Because one thing that has not changed about medicine since 1976 is that there's no surefire test for anything related to the functions of the human mind.
And how much of this is psychological, or induced by stress? Because I had memory problems long before the brain damage.
Fucko bazoo, man. Memory. Wotta puzzler.
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