#also I've literally written like 3 draft posts breaking down thoughts of mine like I'm having a really introspective day waow

[fennthetalkingdog]

I think it's really interesting that, besides my procrastination (and inability to stick to things), my ADHD symptom that I think is the most prominent is my forgetfulness. And it's manifested in so many different ways.

In my extended family, I'm seen as "the smart kid" or "the kid from the smart side of the family." (They mainly see the random spurts of big words and smart-seeming hyperfixation rants.) Between me and my mom and dad, I'm known as "the version of my mom with a worse memory." Literally, I'll mention how most of the things people call me weird for come from her and she'll mention how the "selective memory" did not come from her. (In contrast, she has memories from when she was 2 somehow. My first memory was when I was 5, and my first clear one is from when I was in fourth grade.)

Whenever people (that I'm close to) ask me about my day, I will tell them every bit of it piece by piece. I don't care if it's long, I don't care if it takes hours. It's my way of processing what's happened—if I don't talk about my day aloud, some part of it will slip out of my memory and be gone forever. I recently went on a trip for school and relayed to my family what happened every day to the smallest detail (in my defense, they were in the chat called "Fennec's Updates"). My family members expressed recently afterward that they never knew I could talk that much, and my parents had to tell them how I would talk for at least an hour every day explaining my school day period by period on the car ride home and once we were sitting in the living room (and then promptly ran out of words and didn't want to talk again lol).

I'm slightly faceblind (faces are hard to imagine and remember but I can still recognize their pieces individually) and I think my ADHD is wrapped up in it. Because yeah, a lot of times I can't recognize people because my ability to process faces breaks down, but other times I can recognize a face but not a person, so it doesn't matter if I think a face is slightly familiar if it's in a completely different context. I still don't know where I know it from, it's still basically a stranger's face to me, and I still functionally can't recognize that person.

There are so many things that I'd love to remember but I just can't. It always surprises me when people I know remember a conversation I had with them and reference it, because even to me, that conversation's long passed and I don't remember it myself. But I also always feel kinda bad because I know I can't do that for them, because "things that interest me" that get tagged in my memory almost exclusively comprises fun facts and dumb shenanigans I've done, not facts about my friends that would actually be really useful. And I literally don't know how to change that.

I will promise to do things for people and then forget. This is not the same as me remembering but not being able to start on it, but it has the same effect (and both are misinterpreted).

In a similar vein, I forget people when I'm not around them in person. I'm very not good at online friending because, since I can't see said person irl, I will forget they exist. This also works with people I know irl but can't be with in-person. Friends I make when we're all stuck in a new location and forced to work together immediately leave my mind once we leave the situation. And even friends that I make irl can be forgotten if I don't hang out enough with them (which is why I tend to make one, two, or even three friends in a setting and stop, because I can't juggle more).

This is all to the extent that one of the first things that made me think something was actually going on with me mentally was the fact that my memory got so bad during the pandemic that even I, the person who just writes off probably-symptoms, couldn’t deal with it. And people already ragged on me for it before, I just didn't care enough to worry.