One of the more damning symptoms that have emerged since this whole chronic illness thing kicked off is how horribly my memory has been effected. For a while it was so bad that it felt like I could hardly function; you’d ask me a question and I’d just sit there in silence, not because of an “on the tip of my tongue” feeling but because I my brain wasn’t giving me the words for the thought I wanted to express. It feels like trying to use the web when the internet is down. The wheel just keeps spinning but the page never loads.

It always reminds me of the movie Memento where the lead character can no longer form long-term memories and thus has to “remember” things by taking polaroid photographs. I’m not quite that bad, but ever since the chronic illness really started getting serious, I’ve quite literally felt like I can’t remember past a certain point in the past. It felt like my brain suddenly gated them off and wouldn’t pull up anything; childhood memories, events, dates, and most importantly, myself.

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