Rising Without Recall: My Comeback Story from the Ashes of Memory Loss

🔥 The Phoenix Journey of a Mind That Couldn’t Remember

Most people can look back and replay their life like a movie.

I can’t.

I don’t have a mental highlight reel. I don’t have scenes from my childhood or golden memories of summers past. What I have is semantic memory—facts, truths, lessons. And procedural memory—skills my body remembers. But episodic memory? The ability to recall vivid personal experiences in time and space? That’s almost entirely missing.

And that made me feel broken for most of my life.

🧠 What It Means to Live Without Episodic Memory

For those who don’t know:

• Episodic Memory is what allows most people to remember birthdays, conversations, and experiences with emotional and sensory detail.

• Semantic Memory stores concepts, facts, and meanings. I remember patterns, not parties.

• Procedural Memory is how I know how to write, drive, or play soccer, even if I don’t remember learning.

I lived my entire life with only semantic and procedural memory—hyper-developed out of necessity. But because I couldn’t attach moments to people, or recall shared experiences, I often felt isolated. Disconnected. Lonely in ways I couldn’t explain.

And it started early.

💔 When My Mom Died, I Forgot Her Too

When I was six, my mom passed away. But as time went on, it felt like she never existed.

I had no mental image. No echo of her voice. No flashbacks of hugs or lullabies. Just a fact: I had a mother once. And then I didn’t.

And because I couldn’t remember her, I couldn’t miss her. Not in the way people expect. I carried a strange void I didn’t know how to name. So I never tried.

I filled the silence with distractions—sports, video games, school, fashion, technology—anything to avoid the ache.

🤯 The Day I Realized I Was Different

I always felt different, but I didn’t know why. I didn’t see doctors until 2018, and even then, they couldn’t figure me out. So I did what I always do—I researched. I looked inward. I studied myself.

Then one day, I stumbled across an article on aphantasia.

And everything shattered—and clicked—at once.

People can visualize? They can see things in their mind like a movie?

I thought it was always a metaphor.

That one realization changed my perception of reality, time, and myself.

🕳️ Identity Lost (Over and Over Again)

I realized all the ways I had been surviving without memory:

• Repeating mistakes because I couldn’t remember lessons emotionally.

• Feeling distant from others because I had no shared past.

• Isolating because I felt like a ghost in my own timeline.

Senior year of high school, it all collapsed.

I adopted a victim mindset. I believed I was cursed. That I could never succeed because I wasn’t like other people. Everyone else could see, imagine, relive. I couldn’t.

I spiraled. Suicidal thoughts became familiar. Loneliness was constant. And I felt like I was falling behind in a race I never signed up for.

⚔️ Falling, Fighting, and Forgetting Why

After high school, I chased success through soccer, college, and ambition. But it all fell apart.

I dropped out after one semester. I gave up my dream of going pro.

What I didn’t know at the time: I was also battling undiagnosed celiac disease. From 2016–2023, I lived with constant brain fog, fatigue, pain, and emotional instability. I went fully gluten-free in 2024—and that lifted a fog I didn’t know I was buried under.

But before that clarity, I fell deep.

Into pills. Weed. Numbness.

Three months after dropping out, I got arrested. Drugs were found in my car. I was sentenced to a year of probation.

🌀 The Self-Sabotage Spiral

With one month left of probation, I failed. Inconsistencies in drug tests. Missed communication.

I was sentenced to six months in work release jail.

Still battling the unaddressed symptoms of celiac. Still chain-smoking, vaping, working 70 hours a week. Still broken.

And when I got out in 2022? I went right back to weed, pills, distractions. Because when someone tells me not to do something, part of me wants to do it even more. It was rebellion. It was escape. It was a pattern I didn’t know how to stop.

🌱 The Turning Point: Gluten-Free, Ego-Free, Purpose-Found

Eventually, after more collapses, I finally got tested for celiac disease. I went gluten-free.

And it changed everything.

The brain fog began to clear. My energy came back.

More than that—my intuition returned. My clarity. My will to fight.

What came next wasn’t just healing—it was something otherworldly. Something I wasn’t ready for…

🧠 From Misdiagnosis to Metamorphosis: When Synchronicity Took Over

After I lost my job in 2022, something wild happened.

I started seeing synchronicities everywhere—numbers, symbols, phrases—like reality was speaking directly to me. It felt like the universe had cracked open and was pouring through every moment.

And then… I broke.

Not emotionally—cognitively.

I entered what can only be described as a spiritual psychosis. I was misdiagnosed with schizophrenia, institutionalized, and put on antipsychotic medication.

But I wasn’t hallucinating. I wasn’t detached from reality—I was drowning in it.

For the first time in my life, I saw images in my mind. As someone with aphantasia, this was terrifying. My brain, once dark and imageless, exploded with visions—not one at a time, but thousands. Timelines. Futures. Versions of myself. Entire worlds layered on top of each other. I didn’t know what was real. I didn’t know what was mine.

My mind was fragmented. Shattered. Overstimulated and overstimulating.

And yet—underneath the terror, there was something sacred.

Now that the fog has cleared, now that I’m gluten-free, sober, and rebuilding from the ground up, I’m learning to work with this gift. I’m learning to turn it on and off. To choose clarity instead of being consumed by chaos.

What once felt like madness… was actually awakening.

I had to lose control in order to rebuild a new one. I had to dissolve in order to reintegrate. I had to break in order to see.

🌌 You Are Not Your Thoughts, Your Past, or Your Pain

What I’ve learned is this:

You are not your memories. You are not your mistakes. You are not your trauma.

You are the awareness that notices them. You are the soul that chooses to keep rising.

You are the Universe expressing itself through a human experience. You came here to remember who you are—by experiencing who you are not.

Earth is not easy. But it is sacred. And if you’ve made it this far in your own journey?

I’m proud of you.

And I hope my story reminds you that you can always begin again. Even from nothing. Even from forgetfulness. Even from hell.

Because I did.

And I’m still rising.