Your Memory Is Fluid
(A local amusement park that we frequent in the summer has a water park attached to it. I’m deathly aquaphobic so I avoid that part of the park which usually causes no problems, but occasionally on windy days the strong smell of chlorine will waft over and sometimes triggers a panic attack. I’ve just been calmed down after such an attack.)
Friend: “Wow, I’ve never seen anyone get triggered by the smell of chlorine before!”
Me: “That’s probably because the reason I’m so afraid of water is because when I was almost four years old, I tried to fish a toy out of my grandmother’s pool and fell in. Luckily I’d fallen right next to the ladder and was able to pull myself out because no one even saw me go in.”
Mom: “That never happened!”
Me: “Yes, it did. I know it happened because I was traumatized by it enough to remember it exactly as it happened. I even remember that the toy I was trying to get was the rubber seal that Grandma has on the shelf in the bathroom as a decoration.”
Mom: “I never left you alone by the pool, so there’s no way you could have fallen in!”
Me: “I wasn’t alone by the pool. You were there; you were just talking to someone. I pulled myself out before anyone saw me, but I clearly remember falling in and almost drowning.”
Mom: “We would have noticed!”
Me: “Well, you didn’t, and I was still wet because we’d been swimming in the pool earlier so you didn’t think anything of it, and I didn’t say anything to you because I thought you’d be angry with me for falling in. Why do you think I suddenly went overnight from loving Grandma’s pool to being too terrified to go near water?”
(To this day she insists I never nearly drowned in the pool, which I’m not sure is denial out of an attempt to not seem like a bad parent — she wasn’t; she was usually very attentive when my sister and I were around the pool; she just looked away for a second that one time — or because she doesn’t think I would be able to remember something that happened to me when I was so young, so clearly I either dreamed it or made it up. It’s worth noting that she also doesn’t remember the time my sister fractured her finger at school when someone slammed a heavy steel door completely shut on it despite the fact that she was the one who rushed her to the hospital and insists it didn’t happen, even though my sister clearly remembers the trauma from that, too, so maybe she just doesn’t like to think of her kids getting hurt and refuses to acknowledge it ever happening.)
