bad memories

it's frustrating to me how very very bad my memory is anymore. it used to be one of my strengths actually. time was, i could read something or have a conversation with someone and remember those line by line, and word by word. it made studying for things like history, quite easy for me. it also used to annoy me how very poorly other people remembered what they had said. or what anyone else had said. i also used to have this actually quite exceptional talent for repeating a sequence of numbers said to me back and in reverse order. although, i really was never clear if that was a real talent or not. oh and i could hear a song once and sing all the lyrics verbatim right back to you. and i could close my eyes and remember in a picture how everything looked in a room i'd just been in. i was really good at the party game where things were placed on a tray, and then hidden and you have to list everything that was there.

and now. pffft. some days i forget my own phone number. and i have to really work to learn new things. like i never had to before.

and so begins dementia? maybe. but here's the thing. there are so very many memories that i don't really care to have lodged in my head anymore. and those seem to be the very hardest to get rid of. it is too bad that our brains seemed hardwired to remember those things most vividly.

but maybe there's hope that those too will be gone someday. i do hope so. although i don't really want to have dementia to accomplish that. i don't wish that for my family- to have to take care of me.

so they say that it's not a problem if you are always forgetting where you laid your car keys down (which actually i do with less and less frequency now that i live in a small and efficient space.) but it is a problem if you forget what your car keys are for.

i'm not there yet, but please let me know if i get that bad. i likely won't know unless you tell me. but at the same time, please don't bring up any of the bad memories. those should stay lost.