I Have a Terrible Memory. Am I Better Off That Way?

I call my sister all the time to ask her about myself. Like, “Lily, do you remember if and when I completed my HPV vaccination series?” “Yes, in ninth grade. You complained that your arm was sore afterward.” She describes my past with an unnerving ease.

I am 32, I am neurologically healthy, and I have a terrible memory. Not in the sense that I constantly lose my keys or forget the names of colleagues. More in the sense that after I experience something, it doesn’t tend to stick for very long. I believe I have 50 recollections in total, all high-drama events that I’ve repeated to myself so often they’ve become canon. My sister describes her memory as something I more closely associate with the word memory: an accessible inventory of her past, filled with both mundane and emotional files, colored with rich detail. In conversation, she casually brings up childhood playdates, Monday-night dinners from a decade ago. I, meanwhile, have begun to feel my college years slipping.

Fashion and beauty brands pulled back on Pride collections and messages of support this year. The nation’s second-largest school district has voted to ban cell-phone and social-media use for K-12 students during school days. Team USA’s Olympics opening-ceremony uniforms by Ralph Lauren have been revealed. A new immigration policy will offer legal status and a streamlined path to citizenship to unauthorized immigrants married to American citizens. And if you live in New York City, you may qualify for a free air conditioner.

Sign up to get Brooding, a subscriber-only newsletter interrogating modern family life, written by Kathryn Jezer-Morton.