That other people were nonetheless able to confirm as having happened. Kind of makes it the inverse of the first memory thread. Could involve seemingly important events that you just blotted out of your mind, perhaps from extreme stress.
I have at least two. When I was 6 we took a vacation to Jamaica and I made friends with a Dutch girl-we did everything together for a solid week. During the final night I asked her to dance, and she inexplicably declined.
I have no memory of that, nor of much of anything that we did together. My only clear memory I have is noticing how pretty she looked that night in the restaurant. I recall years later seeing her in some old home movies, and asking my mom who she was. But I was young, so that’s an excuse.
I had just turned 20, and the girl I was in love with had a very overprotective father. He threatened me if I continued to court her romantically. And I have no memory of that, at all. It somehow got round to my mom and she told me about it, years later. It ended up explaining a lot of said girlfriend’s subsequent actions. Oh, he was right to have done so (I was not a well person back then), but it must have been very traumatic for me.
Absolutely. I have a huge hole in my memory, covering several years and many events.
My father was abusive. He hit me. Hit me a lot, and hard. My two sisters, and my mother, and my father himself, all told me about this. But… I can’t remember one single instance.
I figure my mind blanked out the experience as being too painful. Weird, but, I guess, probably for the best.
I have huge holes in my memory from about 18 - 23. The entire period isn’t gone, but many, many things that happened I have either NO recollection of at all or some fuzzy, vague flashes at most. For instance, I have no recollection of my high school or college graduation. I wasn’t even sure I had attended, but my family says I did for HS, but not for college.
Interestingly, this was also the period of time when I was first diagnosed with depression. However, I can’t blame the memory issue on meds - I have been on meds for over 20 years now and don’t have any other periods of memory loss. I would venture to guess it’s due to the extremes of that time - pressure, trauma, sadness, emptiness, etc.
My memory can be pretty amazing at times where I can recall conversations I’ve had with people in kindergarten (to the point of creeping people out). The detail amazes me sometimes. Just the other day an old friend sent me some pics of a canoeing trip I took with his family. My only 2 thoughts were of how much hair I had back then, and why do I have zero recollection of ever taking this trip? It really threw me for a loop.
I have a trivial but possibly illustrative example.
In high school, a guy attacked me and we were fighting, very quickly on the ground grappling. I’m not at all a fighter by nature. The fight was quickly broken up by others. I remembered a feeling of shame, and saying to myself: Heck, I was defending myself! Nothing to be ashamed of!
Later that day, the guy accused me of biting him, on his shoulder during the fight. He showed me the teeth marks. I denied it. I admit I was totally puzzled about how he got those teethmarks.
About 10 years later, I was thinking about the incident, and for the first time thought about that moment of shame and connected it with the bite marks. No doubt, I’m sure I was biting the hell out of the guy who’d attacked me, and that was the cause of the shame. But I’d completely blocked it in my memory. It surprised the crap out of me, that I could be so wrong.
That’s a pretty clear case of a suppressed memory. If we can believe the research (and unfortunately, we often can’t, in psychology & sociology, especially if it’s not recent), another reason for memory lapses is multiple personality disorder.
Of course, there’s also memory loss from heavy drinking and certain drugs. (I only partially remember my colonoscopy. I do remember the nurses laughed at my jokes. My wife says I was a riot.)
On a tangent: I only talked to him once after his accident, but a guy in my childhood neighborhood damaged his brain in a fall and now has that syndrome where he can’t make new memories (as in “50 first dates” and “Memento”.) I can’t imagine waking up every morning thinking I’m 20 years old, and then seeing my aged face in the mirror.
I have very few memories of my brother with whom I shared a bedroom. Partly due to him leaving home pretty much right after graduating high school and partly due to him being so damn unpleasant to be around. I endured all sorts of sporadic abuse – fortunately not sexual – from him. I remember exactly one instance of him actually being nice and vaguely recall my finally standing up to him by attempting to literally put his head through a wall.
After my encounter with a blood clot(as told in this thread) random people occasionally come up and greet me as if we were the best of friends, and I have absolutely no idea who they are. This has happened about 8 times so far since the operation. Other things I draw a complete blank on are the interiors of any of the houses I grew up in, and about 99% of my classmates.
There are many holes in my memory. I used to accuse people of making things up, since surely I would remember such an event. One example, apparently I was in the market for a motor boat once, and went with a friend to check one out. According to him, we were out on the water, testing the boat and it broke down and we had to be towed back in., No memory of any of that. it’s been confirmed by several sources.
It’s somewhat disturbing to me that I cannot recall most of my childhood before high school. I’ve heard my parents, siblings, and other relatives tell me stories about myself as a child, or events in which I participated, and I just stare at them with a blank look on my face.
Sometimes I wonder if this is a result of some unknown trauma, whether physical, mental, or emotional. I’m told I’ve been close to death at least twice as a child. I was also technically dead on the operating table for a couple of minutes after a brush with an 18-wheeler. I’m fairly sure the memory gaps were there BEFORE the 18-wheeler, but I just don’t remember.
I reacted badly to some malaria meds while I was in Africa, and had some hallucinations and panic attacks. There are whole chunks of that time I can’t remember. I’ll see a picture that I either have no memory of, or that I remember completely differently, and it’s so… weird. Everything looks so sunny and smiley, but that still doesn’t seem true to me.
