Mar 11 • Tea-Sippin' Observations
I had amnesia once - or twice
I had amnesia once — or twice. I can’t remember which, which I feel like is how you know it was the real deal. If you can’t remember whether you forgot something, that’s advanced forgetting. That’s forgetting with a graduate degree.
People talk about amnesia like it’s this dramatic movie moment — you wake up in a hospital bed, there’s a mysterious stranger holding your hand, and you whisper, “Who… am… I?” No. Real-life forgetting is you walking into the kitchen and standing there like you’ve just been teleported by aliens. You’re holding a spoon, the refrigerator is open, and you’re thinking, “Was I… cooking? Eating? Or was I just admiring the condiments?”
My amnesia — whichever one it was — didn’t come with a soundtrack. Nobody rushed in with a clipboard. I just realized one day that I had forgotten something important, and then I forgot what the important thing was. That’s when you know you’re in trouble. When you can’t even remember what you’re supposed to be remembering, that’s like losing a bookmark in a book you weren’t reading.
And people love to help. They say things like, “Retrace your steps.” Oh, sure. Let me just walk back through the last 48 hours of my life like I’m a detective in a crime show. “At 3:17 p.m., the suspect — me — opened a bag of chips. At 3:18, he regretted it. At 3:19, he forgot why he walked into the room.” Case closed.
The worst part is when someone asks, “Well, what were you doing right before you forgot?” I don’t know. That’s the whole point. That’s like asking a goldfish to describe its childhood.
And then there’s the moment — you know the one — when the memory finally comes back. It hits you like a squirrel jumping out of a trash can. You’re just minding your business, and suddenly: “OH! THAT’S WHAT I WAS DOING!” And it’s never something noble. It’s never, “I was solving world hunger.” It’s always, “I was looking for my glasses… which are on my face.”
But here’s the thing: forgetting isn’t always bad. Sometimes forgetting is a gift. Sometimes your brain looks at the day you just had and says, “Nope. We’re not keeping that. We’re doing you a favor.” That’s mercy disguised as memory loss.
So yes — I had amnesia once. Or twice. Maybe more. Honestly, at this point, it might be a hobby. But I’ve decided to take it as a sign that my brain is trying to protect me from myself. It’s like a little internal bouncer saying, “Sir, you don’t need to remember that. Move along.”
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I had amnesia once - or twice
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