Most of my memories are like fiction

[resolute]

I saw a post on Tumblr that made me think about my college years.

I don't have a lot of clear memories of college. (For the record, I am Gen X, I am An Old as far as Tumblr is concerned.) Those I do have? All look like I am seeing them on a vid screen. Like I am watching "me" act in scenarios. Like I am piloting a mech, and the mech is me. It's not third person omniscient, I'm not seeing it from outside my body. But it is similar to a work of fiction written in third person with VERY tight focus.

I wonder --

How much of that is because I was autistic masking SO HARD in college?

My memories were recorded like they were happening to someone else in part because I was trying to hard to BE someone else?

ND and NT people, how are your decades-old memories recorded? First person? Tight third? Third omniscient?

:chinhands:

Comments

[talkswithwind]

As a fellow GenX for whom College happened to a somewhat to radically different person (good god I was young)....

They're provably mine. I get less and less recognizable "me" emotion as time goes on, and often replayed memories fade the same way ALL replayed memories morph. To replay a memory is to somewhat relive it, and to lay down a new memory of replaying the memory. This is how I manage to have a lone memory of "the four generation picture" taken when I was a babe in arms. The only reason I still have that memory is it hung in the kitchen at Grandma & Grandpa's, and every time we visited after it was taken, I replayed the memory. That's a flashbulb memory, no sense of self in it, just setting and blocking.

Another extremely early memory was when I was still toddling. Me sitting on the floor was only a bit taller than the orange cat we had when he was sitting. Which is relevant, because the memory I have there is of the cat giving me a classic "Ugh, you again" look and JUMPING OVER MY HEAD. That left a lasting impression to young me, which is why I still have it. That memory has little sense of self, but its not *me*.

College memories are more recognizably me, or contributing to who I am. This is largely due to events in highschool when I morphed from "asshole" to "actually listens sometimes." My Jr. High and Freshman self was a dick, they just were. The me in college was merely ignorant of a lot of things and acted like it. The me in 9th grade had a lot of shit to figure out, and we'd have trouble getting along should that me show up and try to interact.

Possibly related to all this is I had my great "wait, do I have a non-standard gender?" realization when I was 17. Stuff before then feels off.

More or less NT here

[jesse_the_k]

...and they're always "tight third person" hearing myself tell the story to somebody else (a friend, a therapist).

And I realized last week that a story I'd been telling the world (and myself) is off by a year. Very disturbing: I want to be an accurate narrator of my life! At 68 the memories already made (and remade, as talkswithwind importantly writes) outnumber the ones left to make.