In one questionnaire they say that the people who recognize you and whom you don't recognize might call you by a name you don't recognize, so that made me decide my issue was a different one.
I'd heard this, and as it never happens to me like this, I assumed that it didn't apply. What I've realized, however, is that most of my parts don't have names. They're pretty clear identities, I guess, but names aren't an aspect of it. So my conclusion is that when people seem to know me, but I don't know them, its just that I was in a different part or just out-of-it and on autopilot (which happens a lot to me as well).
But always recall if someone reminds me of something we spoke about. internesting how it works.
Sometimes this happens for me, but most of the time not. My husband remembers the whole visit. He prompted me with six or seven things we talked about...when he did this I had just a tiny inkling of vague recall. I thought with time it might come back, but it hasn't. I even looked at a picture of her--nope.
I'm trying to get curious about my memory. Maybe it is just that my mind is so all over the place most of the time that I guess it doesn't have time to really integrate experiences--just kind of coasts over them. And maybe this is why so much of my past is so foggy or just not there. Seriously not there. Like my husband tells me we visited a place and I don't remember going there. The more I have had these cascading bits of memory coming through from my long past (childhood), the more I realize how much is either missing or is scattered in fragments that I am aiming to piece together.
I know that memory is always a reconstruction--it isn't like you store a memory in one place like a file in a file cabinet. Rather, when you remember, you RE-Member--that is put the members of it back together again. And a memory is never the same each time you recall it because always when you put it together again it is updated with your up-to-the-moment current experience. But I think maybe what happens with my memory is it gets "stored" in very fragmented ways. And perhaps this is why, for example, I can remember my grandparents' apartment in vivid and precise detail, and remember many experiences and outings with my grandfather, but I have zero recollection of my visits there after my grandfather died--8 or 9 years of visiting. That year my grandfather died was a pivotal one in what has happened to me--akin to the major explosion into parts when I was nearly 4. That was the year that everything shifted and my mother got full control of me. My grandfather died, and my father was done with me. That was the year I went into what was probably a serious depression that lasted for two years until I went to high school and re-invented myself (something I remember doing very consciously).
Anyway, I guess all this is fodder for my journal. I am doing some exercises of my own design that are helping me reconstruct my past. It's interesting how I can start with a memory of a place or a person, and if I write it down and kind of open my mind, all sorts of other bits and pieces stick to it. And, voila, like a mosaic some of the pieces fall into place. It is a very messy mosaic at the moment, but slowly I am gathering together all the bits and filling in the spaces. I suspect some of it will never come back, but doing these exercises shows me that I can remember a lot more than I thought I could, if I am in the right headspace when I do it. What it is also showing me is that I have different kinds of memories--some are solidly concrete--what I call "regular" memories. Others are more foggy/dreamy--what I call "sort of" memories. And others are just wildly swirling bits and bobs--what I guess might be called "traumatic" memories. I am convinced that if I can keep working at it, I will be able to reconstruct my life's narratives. And there's more than one narrative. Which is, I suppose, partly why I get the DID label.
