Memory, Friendships & Going Crazy

I’ve been noticing a strange thing happening this past year: the tenuous relationship between memory and friendship.

I like to think I have a relatively good memory, both short term and long term. I can recall birthdays, conversations, stories and people. I always forget where I left my keys but I can tell you which rides we rode and in what order on our last trip to Disneyland. I remember who said what, not in the sense of being anal and tracking down everything that happened in my life so far, but just a distinct understanding of what happened when. It’s not that hard. I thought most people, including friends, were like this. But there’s been a recent occurrence–or perhaps I’ve only recently come across it–where what I thought (and knew) what happened is not what other people remember. And it drives me insane.

For me, it happens in two different ways: a friend’s lack of memory over something that I know happened between us. I’ve seen this happen so many times, where someone will repeat a story, a comment, an offer, and even an entire conversation, all of which had happened before, whether it was a week ago, two months ago or even a year ago. Most of the times, especially in a group setting, I can live with this. People’s memories work in different cycles and if they feel the need to rehash an old argument or recollection, that’s fine. I’ll just smile along. But what do you do when it’s between two people and you can swear on your life that you’ve already discussed this before? Does the other person honestly not remember? Is the deja-vu feeling (“Hey, this all sounds really, really familiar…and I wonder why?”) never triggered? On my part, I wonder if something that happened between us before was not relevant enough for to be remembered. I don’t take offense from this; I’m just flabbergasted that things can be repeated without complaint.

I’m not talking about expectations of friends to remember details (like names and occupations because honestly, who has time to remember little things like that?) but entire conversations spoken as if new. I know how to handle them politely but the end result is always the same: I’m baffled that this continues to happen.

The other thing that has happened to me way too many times is another person’s re-appropriation of my actions, my stories, and my thoughts. This is the thing that makes me feel like I’m going crazy. I’ll have conversations with someone that will flow in a certain direction where I say and do certain things…and then maybe a week later, that someone will tell me something along the same lines, but turn things around. They say and did certain things that I know I actually said and did to/with them. How does a brain even work like that? Is it just bad memory skills (“Oh, this happened but how? It must have been me.”) or a complete disregard or self-involvement (“Oh, this happened but it was me.”). Example: a man tells a girl that he needs new dry-cleaners so the girl looks up services for him, finds a local place called XX and sends him the information. Man thanks her. Later, man tells girl that he found a new dry cleaning service, they’re great and the place is called XX. What?

I don’t know if anyone else has gone through it, but it’s really the oddest experience of sitting with someone and hearing things come out of their mouths, all of which you know you actually did.

Then there’s the weird experience of a friend recalling a memory that never happened. You sit with someone and they reminisce a shared event but mention details and actions that you know, because you really remember it, that never, ever, ever took place. It’s less annoying; rather, it gives me hope that aliens are among us and yes, parallel universes do exist and occasionally overlap. But it still drives me crazy.

Wouldn’t it drive you crazy? If something you distinctly remember (and can retrace your steps–except when it comes to finding out where I last left my car keys–or words or dialogue) is not something that someone else says happened? It’s like the hard, cold reality that you know is not the same hard, cold reality that another human lives in. Undeniable facts are (in fact) deniable.

It makes me want to write everything down, action by action. Of course, recalling action and the written word is always subjective. How I perceive things to happen is not exactly how someone else would perceive happened. A man speaks to a girl, who becomes insulted by what he’s saying. The man remembers saying something fine and the girl remembers the man saying something rude. Whose memory is correct?

There’s really no way to tell but I need some justification out there in the universe that I’m not crazy and that at least 85% of what I remember is correct. That when a man drives a woman to her apartment after a date but the woman remembers walking home that night, that the woman is batshit crazy. Right?

Then again, writing everything down sounds like a big waste of time. Just like blogging.

PS. I wrote this all down so I can remember I had this whole thought process before so when it happens to me again, I know I’m not crazy about this one thing.