Ramble on Memory
Honestly, the past year - particularly since I started doing puzzles and finding out I'm really good at them - has been just a really interesting experience cause a lot of people, and I mean A LOT of people, are astonished and telling me how impressive my memory is - particularly my visual memory.
I've had my mom telling me that she used to find it astonishing to watch me play by myself because I'd so effortlessly match things and work straight from the top of my head like it was nothing - and she told me that because I was helping her with a puzzle she got for Christmas and was avoiding because it was 'too hard' and she was watching me put pieces without really referencing the image
And regularly - from multiple kids that joined in our puzzling and fellow staff members who would do puzzles with me - been told and commented on how fascinating it is to watch me puzzle away. The other day one of the kids that was doing a puzzle with me commented on a really weird and obscure looking piece and asked another staff what they thought it was supposed to be, and so I looked over at it briefly and went "Oh globe, bottom right" and apparently that was enough to get me the nickname of "all knowing [name]"
And it's just really weird. Since about 2-3 years before I was diagnosed with DID, I developed this self concept that I have a horrible memory and it was something I panicked over a lot before figuring out what was going on. Over my course of having DID and learning to work with it, I came to terms and acceptance about my bad and likely worsening memory, but lately I've been sitting here being told regularly by multiple people that my memory is not only good, but fascinating and astonishing so much so my mom INSISTS I have a photographic memory (I don't think I do still, but she insists)
And its so weird. At this point I have to kind of accept that I probably really do have an abnormally good visual memory, and one of my coworkers said "well of course you do, you need it for bird identification" and that MAKES SENSE but its just.... wild? To realize not only is a form of memory for me not only Not Horrible but Astonishingly Good?
And it's also making me a lot more aware of just how quickly I can record a thing I'm visually looking at and recall it with pretty sharp precision when I actually lock in and focus cause honestly... thinking about it objectively, it does sound kind of insane particularly with the last puzzle that had so many small details that all looked the same
But.... its just weird.
I know episodic, semantic, etc are all different forms of memory and function differently and our semantic memory has always been alright, but its just....
Kind of mind blowing
Cause I also realized this really actually applies to patterns and like episodic screenshots since sometimes when we are playing Bullshit (card game) or Uno Flip, I can pretty accurately remember where cards are going for an extended period and can remember what cards each person had and if they played it or not and like.... it's made me a very annoying person to play against
And thats all borderline-episodic memory so it just REALLY throws me off to realize how much my brain is able to pick up when I'm not dissociating to another world because I've really been having people looking at me like I'm fucking Rainman and its just so WEIRD having Good Memory and people actually assigning the "insane memory" label to me after so many years of having "clinically bad memory"