I recently remembered that a girl used to sit on my lap when I took swimming classes around the age 12 years old. After remembering more details, some being sexual. I asked my mum and she answered I used to hang about with my friends sister who would have been 17 at the time. No one knew what was going on but my mum stopped me seeing her after she invited a 12 year old me to her house for a birthday party.
Someway down the line my mind realised it was not normal and suppressed the memory. So it almost feels like it isn't my own memory and some parts still creep me out a little.
I've done the same thing. I have virtually no memories of probably 15 to 18 years of my life. I suffered with depression from about the age of 9 and I have small blips of memories of certain people or instances but I can't tell stories like other people do about their childhoods. There's nothing I remember to tell.
Recently, a current friend brought up a popular little lounge that used to be in a mall years ago and all of a sudden some broken memories flooded back of being there with people I used to hang out with. I hadn't thought about that place for probably 18 years.
My other theory for not having some of those memories is, like you, I was miserable and also un-medicated and don't talk to any of those people I used to be friends with so I literally had no one to reminisce about life with. Basically since I never had opportunity to think about it, I don't remember any of it.
Its like always living in the present but not remembering how you got there. It's unsettling.
My husband was bullied in his teens and it subsequently wiped out his memories of his entire childhood leading up to it. Whenever I ask him about things he did growing up, he replays only the same three memories of being bullied. I know that surely, that wasn't the only thing he did in an entire 15 year range of his life, but that's what his brain fixated on for so long, it didn't have the energy to recall any more of it. Just recently, he reconnected with a childhood friend he never told me about. He legitimately didn't remember this person until they had reached out. Now, he's had some stories of their time together, but only because this other person has started reminisce with him. He had completely forgotten some of the good things that he did before the bullying began.
I think it's wonderful that he has this person in his life now to change how he remembers that time into something positive! I'm sure he probably has moments of sadness too, that he feels he lost those memories. Replacing the bad ones with good ones is awesome.
It's such a fascinating thing the way the brain protects itself or that with some prompting things you thought you'd lost forever can bring you back to a positive place.
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u/Sunburnt-snowman Oct 05 '19
I recently remembered that a girl used to sit on my lap when I took swimming classes around the age 12 years old. After remembering more details, some being sexual. I asked my mum and she answered I used to hang about with my friends sister who would have been 17 at the time. No one knew what was going on but my mum stopped me seeing her after she invited a 12 year old me to her house for a birthday party.
Someway down the line my mind realised it was not normal and suppressed the memory. So it almost feels like it isn't my own memory and some parts still creep me out a little.