My identity is big and includes many different pieces.

My forgetfulness is a big part of me. I often forget many things. It’s a part of my daily life, and plays a big role in my life. The cause of it is complicated and unexplainable, and many people have it. I won’t exactly say what the cause is, but I will say every 1 in 6 people are diagnosed with it. 

It’s a violent and scary thing to have that many people are grateful to not have. My forgetfulness does not define who I am as a person, but instead partially tells my story. It bothers me to be so forgetful but at the same time it shows me to be grateful to not have it worse.

The constant forgetting has brought me to a neurologist, so it’s not a thing to take lightly. It’s a serious issue I have and I decided to get it checked, I have started the testing, but I have not yet gotten results. He took notes of what I forget and how my mind works, and he gave me a follow up appointment.

I’m hoping I don’t have a very serious problem with it, and that it’s just something I can get help with. I know that sounds a little deep, but it’s the real world that billions of people live in. When it first started I was 10. I would go from one room with the answer of a question someone wanted me to ask and I would go back in the other rooms forgetting the answer. Now I forget whole conversations or things I have said. One time I was so convinced that I didn’t say something that it took about forty  times or more in total and two people to tell me that I really did say what I said.

My single story is silence. People say I’m quiet and shy. I absolutely hate it when people call me shy, because it’s not true. I’m not shy but I am quiet. My quietness goes a lot deeper and more in depth than just being quiet. What makes me seem shy is my social anxiety. I’m not afraid to speak but at the same time I am. I’m nervous I will mess up while talking or about my cheeks turn red from the panic, or my breath being smelly, or having something in my teeth. I’m not shy, my anxiety drives me to silence, to overthinking every detail, every mess up possible.There’s more to me than being “shy”.

People do not understand what it’s like to know the answer to the question and want to scream it out at the top of your lungs, but you simply could never do that because it would track attention and cause a calamity inside my mind. The only balance I could ever find with this is recovery, sympathy, care, and love. But that will not be coming anytime soon, because the overthinking will drown all those nice thoughts into despair and take me with it. 

I’m not shy, I’m frightened, trapped, and in misery. It’s all happening right in front of you, I even call out for help by trying to give signals, but you ignore them and don’t notice them and think “oh, she’s just having a bad day”. Yes, I am having a regular day that you would call a bad day, because you're not the one that’s trapped.

I have finally built the confidence to raise my hand with my heart racing, speeding like a race car, with fear in my mind and I over think that my face is red as I talk, making me more anxious and giving me more reasons to not speak in class in front of everyone. Just writing it, just thinking of it, makes me dread it all and makes me shake in fear and in intensity, my mind throws out thoughts like they are second nature, like it’s been forever since the last time I got to scream out everything about my anxiety.

Something that’s important to me is music. I have dozens of songs to write about that help me find my voice, and help show what kind of person I am, and how I feel. One song is Bring Me to Life by Evanescence. This song is about people feeling dead/ empty inside, and how only few people can make them feel better. It helps me find my voice, because I can relate to it, and helps me express what I feel and shows what type of person I am. Also it is important to me because it makes me feel like I don’t have to explain my feelings and if I want to but don’t know how to say, or show it, I could just say that this song is an important song, and expresses how I feel, then I could just play the song for them and tell them what the lyrics mean to me. You can listen to this song on Youtube.

My hope for the future is I will recover from the forgetfulness and the anxiety and feeling alone and everything that follows. I know you're questioning where all of this comes from and that will stay unanswered. I won’t tell you, I’m sure you must know, or have an idea by now what the cause is and if you don’t you’ll have to figure it out. But for the future, I hope it all goes away with time, but it will be a while before it does, and if it does. I feel connected to people like me, then disconnected from everyone who doesn’t understand complicated lives.