“I don’t think I signed a lease,” I informed one of my caseworkers.
“Don’t worry,” she reassured me. “Everyone signed a lease.”
“Do you know for sure that I signed one?”
“Definitely,” came the reply. “I was there. You arrived with your Mom and your cats in cages then you put the cats in the bathroom and came downstairs and signed the lease.”
That sounded like something I’d do. There was just one thing. I didn’t remember it at all. I don’t remember most of the day I moved. I don’t remember leaving my old apartment, what size the moving truck was, what the new apartment was like… it’s all a big blank. There’s only two things I vaguely remember; asking an unknown number of movers to leave the boxes in the middle of the room and coming back from somewhere with my Mom to find that my bed had arrived and the caseworkers had made it in brand new bedding. Those are also the only two pictures I took of the move.
I had a similar conversation with my friend S. We were walking back to our building after an evening walk and talking about adding each other on Facebook, even though she’s not on very often.
“I just want to give you a head’s up that I post a lot of LGBTQIA stuff on my page,” I warned. Which is kind of true. I haven’t been posting as much lately. Most goes onto my blog’s page.
“I literally do not know what that means,” she replied, “but I can guess. I know you’re into that, well, lesbian and gay stuff. You told me on our first walk.”
“I did?” I asked in bewilderment. I had no recollection of that conversation at all.
“I’m a panromantic asexual,” I continued, just in case that never got covered.
“I remember you saying that!” she said with a grin.
Welp I definitely had that conversation.
It is extremely disconcerting to forget something so deeply that no amount of prodding or reminders brings it back. It’s like a hole deep in my brain. I forget things so much already. I can be totally involved in a phone conversation, both listening and talking, and forget the whole thing as soon as I hang up. The same thing happens to my dreams; I wake up and they’re gone. I put everything down in my calendar and check it every single day (sometimes twice a day). And when I read a book, I read it twice. Simply because I discover all sorts of things I never noticed (or remembered) the first time around. All those things are annoyances. Forgetting beyond recovery is scary.
My family has a strong history of dementia, which is something I really hope to avoid, and my memory issues aren’t helping my worries. It doesn’t help that I’m currently without a family doctor. My old doctor retired and no one around here’s accepting new patients. Hopefully I’ll find one soon. Then I’ll have to write a list of concerns to tell them because otherwise I’ll forget.