I definitely do not have DID. However I do have huge lapses in memory, but they also don't really affect everyday functioning unless someone wants me to remember something.

So let me ask the community, how much of your childhood/past can you remember?

Over the past few days I've been trying to dig for my earliest memory. I could never place how old I was at the time, probably between 3-6, but I have a still-frame in my mind of reaching for the flour in the refrigerator (which according to mom, I promptly coated the house in before she woke up to the powdery mess). I can picture my bedroom from when I was maybe 6-8? I remember what my favorite hot wheels car looked like... I remember the bucket-swing at my elementary school in Illinois, that's all I remember about that school. My next memories are of being 11-12 and they're only about a.. a bad event. So it's not like I have amnesia forgetting trauma unless there was something earlier that I did forget. Next I kind of remember my 13th birthday, and a little bit about my middle school friends, I have a blurry idea of what they looked like and I think I know a few of their names but that about covers middle school. High school I do remember quite a few more things, but it's still just things like what the building looked like, I remember the food, I don't remember ANY of the teachers, I couldn't pick them out of a crowd. There's only one classmate that I'd recognize from high school but he's the friend that sent me the texts in my other post. I dated a guy in high school for like two weeks, I don't remember his name and I can't picture him at all. I don't remember walking across the stage at my graduation, I remember the "prep" room and I remember leaving the building.

But all of my memories seem to work like that, they are still-frames of places. Not necessarily movies of events. I have a harder time remembering people than I do for events though. I could meet the same person for a week and still not build up that recognition. If I talk to more than one new person in a small amount of time (a couple days) I will confuse one person for another or just continue to forget all of them. Customers at work constantly recognize me, but I don't remember them at all. When I do try to recall a person, and then later see them, the details are almost always completely off too. Like if I'm telling my boss about something that happened with a customer, she likes to ask what they looked like for some reason. I might describe them as being short, fat, with darkish hair and highlights or something then have it turn out that they were medium-height, only slightly chubby, and blonde.

I also have a problem with over-thinking events. I'll space off and think about something happening to such precise detail that sometimes I'll recall it as having actually happened. Usually I can catch myself though, I think.. thinking wait.. no... that's not right... I just end up confusing myself a lot. Most of the trouble I have with this is that I'll talk to someone in my head a lot before actually confronting them. I won't say everything I mean to say because I feel like I've already said it. Then later when I bring it up in a conversation they say "You never said that" and I'm sure that I did... I don't know.

Does all of this sound normal? Am I just a really forgetful person?