Who Let the Dogs Out?

...and forgot to bring them back in? The answer is me as my memory skills start to decrease little by little every few days. I can't put my finger on why this continues to happen as some other events in my life but I do believe it could be from OCD or Schizophrenia both of which I haven't been diagnosed with. But, it's also something in a "High Functioning Autistic," which my past therapist claims I am.

I'm putting myself and others in danger every time I attempt to cook or use a knife. I'm surprised I haven't burnt the house down or cut myself yet when I've come all too close. Every time I put the dogs out I risk leaving them to freeze to death, sometimes not remembering for hours at a time. They have come back shivering, thirsty, and overall abused. So I stopped putting them out at all but now my mother is trying to get on me for it.

She has a good point that I haven't been doing much to any of my responsibilities lately sometimes almost forgetting to do an important task such as eating or taking a shower. I always remember but usually at last minute. In my defense I cannot control my memory problems that can lead to a full on spout of confusion. It's something that is slowly getting worse eating away at every thing I trusted before especially the past.

I'm starting to wonder if my memories ever happened at all, some of them anyway. I have memories of me hurting people that nobody else seems to remember. Apparently, a normal symptom of someone with OCD  is sometimes finding false memories implanted into your brain or questioning the true ones. It started out when my mom told me I always wore shoes in the house, always, but I have memories of me not. This drew me into suspicion where I became so obsessed that I dug for a picture to prove myself right.

In that case I was correct but not always. A few months back I have this memory of me putting a brand new pack of pencils on the table. I knew we had to have gone to the store but I couldn't remember for the life of me, still don't. Then, they went missing and I couldn't remember where I had put them. About, two months later I finally found them but I still don't remember how they got there. I tried to picture it and thought about what "could," of happened but nothing was certain.

So how can you trust your memories? Well, what from I found if somebody else has that same memory then it was was bound to happen! Right? Unless they're lying to you and trying to trick you to believe in an illusion that doesn't exist. That's where paranoia comes in and I'll cover that soon. Still, it's doubtful that anybody would even want to trick you like that. Normally if somebody has the same memory of you (doesn't have to be exact) it happened. Except that doesn't always work.

From time to time my cousins and I will fight back and forth over an event that happened where we all remember being there, except only four of us were there. Sometimes you hear a story so much you forget that you weren't actually there. Even if you remember the taste or smell of something, that could simply be the way it was described to you. Freaky huh? So how do you know that your memories are real?

The simple answer is you don't. Everybody experiences things differently and memories become distorted from over time. The memory of your childhood will slightly become lesser and lesser relevant to the original. Most of the time anyway. But, that doesn't mean you don't know what happened. To an extent you can usually tell that the memory happened or may have evidence that you were there.

It's not quite the same for me, as memories that didn't happen at all are in my head possibility replacing the ones I need. For example a memory of a conversation replacing the trip to the store for those pencils which I did go to and just don't remember. Unless my memory of being told that was a lie... or it's replacing another important memory that I need to remember...

THE DOGS?!