I wake up every morning and I remember. My hyperthymesia, also known as a highly superior autobiographical memory, never affords me a moment of silence, and my brain constantly reminds me of almost every conversation I have ever had or every moment I have ever lived.
I vividly remember the time that I got stung by a bee on my eye during my third birthday party and screamed out in terror. I can place myself back into the moment when that ex-boyfriend broke up with me, knowing exactly where everything in my apartment was and what he was wearing. I remember my brother’s funeral, and if you were in my brain, I could walk you down the aisles, outline each of the Saints on the stained glass windows and tell you where each of my crying family members were sitting.
While hyperthymesia is a blessing, allowing me to rarely forget a moment, I also won’t lie to you. I hate it. With my blessing comes the obsessive need to stay organized and the never-ending thoughts about if what I said during the simplest conversation was embarrassing or stupid or just plain wrong. I have depression and almost constant anxiety. I am extremely empathetic and feel emotions more deeply than most people do, because all I do is remember.
I remember the hurt that ran through my whole body when Rock-Austin Schexnider ran around the playground and told all the kids in my class I had a disease called “Emmy-titus” and no one in my fifth grade class talked to me for an entire two weeks. I remember the intense pain on March 24, 2010 of seeing my step-dad cry—a man whose imposing 6-foot-4-inch frame broke down with immense pain and tears streaming down his eyes. I remember the loneliness I felt in 8th grade when my mom and I would ride an hour to school and back and sit in complete silence with nothing to talk about.
I’ve dealt with all the remembering for almost 20 years, and because I grew up in a stoic household, I was constantly told “we don’t talk to therapists” or “we just let it go.” The problem with that, for me, is that it just about impossible for me to let things go. It’s not because I don’t want to—it’s because my brain usually won’t let me. But also, I never liked acknowledging that I didn’t feel okay.
While I seem to have managed myself fine (according to my therapist), I’ve always wanted to be normal; or moreso, to feel normal, so the majority of my life I have hid the remembering from even my closest friends. With that came intense anxiety and long stretches of depression. I would lay in my bed staring at the ceiling, hoping that one day it would all stop. I was tired of every single meticulous detail running through my brain, causing it to feel like it was a constant fire I could never put out. To me, it felt like no one cared if you remembered the day you met them or what exactly they said in the tone they said it; they just thought it was strange that you remembered
This past summer, I lived in Chicago by myself and worked at an internship from 9 to 5, Monday through Thursday. While my brain appreciated the routine of taking the same train to work and back, working out and then making dinner and going to bed all to do it again the next day, I was depressed and very lonely. Living by yourself also gives you a lot of time to think and to remember. It was this summer that I just got unquestionably tired, and I couldn’t hide it anymore.
Maybe it was all of exhaustion I felt from hysterically crying on the phone to my mom finally telling her about how I just couldn’t stop memorializing every moment of my life. Maybe it was the burden I felt like I was to my best friend who had to hear me discuss the same problem over and over again so that I could fully process it. Whatever it was, something inside of me motivated me to want to try to feel better.
So, I decided when I got back to campus that I needed to start going to counseling. As I walked to South Dining Hall on a bright September day, I stood next to the bench closest to the law building at Main Circle and made a very anxious phone call to the University Counseling Center. I began chipping at the wall that years of hiding and remembering put up.
I’ve seen the quote floating around that says, “Going to a counselor or therapist when you’re feeling sad or overwhelmed should be as normal as going to the doctor when you have the flu.” Rarely has a quote resonated with me so deeply. Maybe if someone had told me there was someone who could talk through what I was feeling or the condition I had, I could have better managed or avoided altogether the intense breaking point I went through this summer.
With counseling, I’ve learned to view my hyperthymesia as the way that I care for others, and I am learning to love the way I see and experience the world. I still have a long way to go, and I still get depressed and anxious, but I hope that everyone understands that when I remember, it’s because I care.
And most importantly, it’s okay to admit you’re afraid and that you don’t feel okay.
The University Counseling Center (UCC), accredited by the International Association of Counseling Services, Inc. provides confidential short-term counseling and crisis intervention services to eligible Notre Dame students and consultation and outreach services to members of the Notre Dame community.