Everybody forgets things, but not the way I do

Have you ever tried really, really hard to remember something? Not mundane things like your Netflix password, the quadratic equation or when bin night is. I’m talking about the sort of intentional memory-making one might attempt during a major life moment, a premeditated bid to bottle an experience so it might be revisited one day in the undefined future.

Jamila Rizvi has anterograde amnesia which is characterised by compromised ability to form new memories after a certain point in time.Credit: ISTOCK

Before I got married, people who’d already been there, done that urged me to take a quiet moment for myself amid the chaos. “Be sure to pause and take it all in because it goes by so fast,” I was warned by trusted friends and family. So, at critical romantic moments, I would close my eyes and focus intently on depositing them in a contrived “forever” memory bank.

It didn’t work, of course, as the underlying processes of memory formation and retrieval are unconscious and automated. While conscious effort, in the form of repetition or rehearsal, can enhance memories or cement learnings, we can’t consciously choose which memories to retain or forget in the way a computer manages data.

Five years later, I practised retrieving memories of my wedding day with a neuropsychologist. Over many hours together, we pushed and pulled at the scope of my ability to recall both the very important and the entirely inconsequential, a process designed to test precisely how damaged my recall has become following trauma to my brain from surgery and radiation.

The conclusion of those tests was that I have anterograde amnesia. It’s characterised by compromised ability to form new memories after a certain point in time, which, for me, is early 2019. Specifically, I blank over details, have difficulty finding words, misplace things and struggle to recall recent events.

This is the part where, were I having a conversation rather than waxing lyrical in a magazine, others would insist they do this, too: forgetting or losing things sometimes or having a word on the tip of their tongue that won’t quite come out. Then comes the subsequent part, when I smile politely and shrug off my companion’s insistence that they know my mind better than me or my doctors. Yes, everyone forgets things. But not like this.

I imagine thick black Texta lines slashing through dreams and plans made impossible by a brain less reliable in the moment than it was.

JAMILA RIZVI

While I have become adept at covering my cognitive impairment, memory loss is still a bewildering mix of frustration, uncertainty and vulnerability. I imagine thick black Texta lines slashing through dreams and plans made impossible by a brain less reliable in the moment than it was. I create routines, reduce distraction and practise association games, in the hope I can mould sufficient substitutes for what my brain used to do with ease.

There is deep yearning in being a writer who can no longer find the words she’d like. There is disappointment in the synonyms employed as cover, words which fail to communicate quite as precisely as those which evaded capture might have done. Is it strange to be jealous of the way you once were? As well as jealous of others as they are now?

Sometimes I’m ashamed to wallow in sadness when my memory loss pales next to those who can no longer recall their happiest moments or recognise loved ones. Yet when I fall asleep, I tiptoe along the edge of memory’s precipice, wondering what used to lie where there is now only vast, black emptiness. And in the morning, alongside my Vegemite on toast, I indulge in self-loathing prompted by my self-pity.

My wedding memories are from before my amnesia, so I spoke to my doctor with confidence when asked about them. I shared bright and shiny recollections with enthusiasm, flush with the reminiscence of being young and well. Only afterwards did I realise that the “clear” memories I’d described were in fact drawn largely from photos and other people’s stories.

Even when my memory had worked well, it had faltered. Those moments I’d set aside, to imprint the unimaginably perfect buzz and beauty on my brain, had not succeeded as planned. Instead, my unconscious had determined the important times for itself, disregarding the romantic and the elegant in favour of the peculiar and uproarious.

I am left with the reflection that memory is exquisite in its intangibility. It is not an asset to be owned but a collective game of charades in which we each play our part, sharing and guessing, at where the truth really lies.

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