This market resolves as YES if, by January 1, 2025, I have found a definitive explanation for my childhood amnesia. Otherwise, it resolves as NO.
To give a brief explanation, without divulging too much personal info:
Roughly two years of my childhood, from late spring of 2002 until spring of 2004, are entirely missing from my memory.
My biological father passed away in October of 2022, and my sister sent copies of home movies from our childhood to me (along with some other stuff I inherited).
In May 2023, I watched the home movies that were recorded from early 2002 until roughly July 2004, and to my frustration, I was unable to jog any memories. As a matter of fact, it's eerie just how little I remember of that period compared to the ones that came before and after; it felt like watching footage from someone else's life until I suddenly remembered some things shown in the footage from June and July of 2004.
Potential explanations include, but are not limited to:
Regular childhood forgetting. I don't think this is it; I have a lot of memories from 2001 to mid-2002 and mid-2004 to 2005, but almost none from mid-2002 to mid-2004. My sister, who is three years younger than me, has more memories from that time period than I do.
Brain injury: Possible, but I'm dubious. I don't think many injuries could cause two years of retrograde amnesia without significantly interfering with my brain's functioning, and aside from my trauma and ADHD, I actually function fairly well.
Psychogenic/dissociative amnesia: My current theory. It causes "retrograde episodic memory loss," which is exactly what I experience. Notably, other components of memory from that era - sensory and emotional - seem to persist better than the episodic memory, which is more or less just gone. Dissociative amnesia is typically caused by trauma, and makes that trauma difficult to remember - in severe cases, dissociative amnesia leads to DID or OSDD, among other dissociative disorders. This theory only has one real hole in it - my biological parents were always abusive, having admitted to hitting me as a literal baby, repeatedly; since that didn't cause much dissociative amnesia (I can remember plenty of events from when I was 3, at which point I was still being physically abused) it implies that the 2002-2004 dissociative amnesia must have had a separate cause.
My sister and I both have an agreement that "something very bad happened" around early 2002, but neither of us knows exactly what it was - myself because of amnesia, her because she was literally two years old at the time. (Sidenote: some alters in my system DO know, but they won't tell me anything more specific than "it's really bad" and "It would be like opening Pandora's box." Yes, I am/we are very mentally ill. I might make a good case study, though, if anyone knows someone writing a thesis or research paper on trauma and the disorders it can cause. So there's that at least!)
My theory of the potential causes for each type of amnesia goes like this:
Childhood forgetting: Natural. Recalling memories in full likely impossible.
Brain injury: Caused two years of retrograde amnesia via hippocampal damage while leaving the rest of the brain pretty much intact. Recalling memories in full likely impossible.
Dissociative amnesia: Unknown severe traumatic event ca. spring 2002 that I took two years to fully recover from. This is speculation. I have evidence that something bad happened, but no evidence of what it was, who did it, or why it happened. Recalling memories in full maybe possible with therapy and strategies to minimize dissociation and heal from trauma (or possible via flashback, but I'd rather not relive whatever it was.)
Note: above, "in full" means "to the same extent a typical person would remember their childhood at ages 6 and 7," or potentially slightly more than typical given my usually-very-good memory.
I need to find definitive evidence to resolve this as YES. Such evidence could include:
Other video/audio recordings or photographs that were hidden somewhere in my biological family's house
Explanations of what happened - by voice, text (including journals/other things not meant to be seen by me) or any other communication or documentation by anyone who was an adult at the time (could include medical records etc., especially if the cause is physical trauma of some kind)
Reliving the memory of the cause of my amnesia, or experiencing a flashback of it. Somewhat subjective, but crucially I am not known to have a history of false memories and the accuracy of my episodic memory has surprised even me at times.
We'll see what happens. I won't be betting on this market, but I would estimate the probability as of September 2023 as ~80%, since I plan on finding a trauma-focused therapist by the end of 2023.
If I feel that the existence of this market is hazardous to my mental or physical health, if the comments devolve into a cesspool, or if I feel that the market's existence causes problems for Manifold in general, I reserve the right to resolve it as N/A without warning. I'm starting the market listed, since I don't believe it contains any objectionable content, and I genuinely might be a good case study in trauma, but I will not object should admins choose to delist the market.
P.S. I know this "reads like an ARG," but unfortunately it's very real. It makes me wonder how many ARGs were inspired by similar childhood amnesia, actually...there's probably a big correlation between experiencing The Horrors in real life as a child and then becoming a horror writer/filmmaker/etc.
1,000You said "almost none from mid-2002 to mid-2004"; does that mean there's at least one? Can you determine whether it's from the beginning/end of the period, or somewhere in the middle?
How long ago did you notice the amnesia? How old were you in 2002?
Is your mother still alive? Are there any neighbors, schoolteachers, or other relevant people from your childhood you could ask?
How do you know that the memories you do have came from certain years?
@IsaacKing There's scattered fragments from the period - like, I vaguely remember one short memory from a trip to South Carolina that I know was in 2003. I have one memory of my second-grade classroom and about two of my third-grade classroom.
I've known about it for a while, but didn't realize until a year or two ago that "I can't remember like two years of my life" was less of a Haha Funny thing and more of a That's Not Normal And It's A Sign Of Trauma thing. I was 5 for the first half of the year and 6 for the second half.
My mother is alive, but we've been no-contact for four years and she left the country a few months ago. I didn't have contact information for any of my neighbors until one texted me out of the blue recently because my mother left a bunch of my old stuff in the basement when she moved out. I don't remember the names of any of my teachers before fifth grade.
Contextual clues, mostly. There are some memories I have that might be from 02-04, but I have no way of distinguishing them. Almost all of my memories of where I was living at the time are from the last year or two I was living there, so 04-06.
@evergreenemily Have you considered creating a spreadsheet of every memory you have from childhood and then trying to place years on them? This could help you figure out how sharp a cutoff it is, and how anomalous that two year period actually is. (I'd suggest first trying to think of as many memories as possible, and only trying to place dates on them afterwards.)
Your schools probably still have records of whose classes you were in, if you wanted to go that route. It seems unlikely that a teacher would remember, but they might if you were an exceptional student in some way, or if whatever you experienced caused a noticeable change in demeanor in class. (Or got brought up explicitly.)
Any childhood friends you could reach out to?
Have you checked records of police reports for your name and the names of people you know?
@IsaacKing Yup, I've tried that spreadsheet thing. I've also watched some old home movies from that period and it's stark (and uncanny) how quickly it moves from "oh, I kinda remember that" to "Who Is That Person," then moves right back to "oh, I kinda remember that" at the end.
I have a suspicion the school route wouldn't go anywhere - even if they noticed that change in demeanor, they probably can't attribute it to anything.
I don't have contact info from any of my childhood friends.
I haven't done that, but maybe I should. I doubt the cops ever got involved, but I'm obviously very uncertain.
Pretty sure this makes it borderline impossible for me to access the records. (Seattle PD, for reference.)
@Meta_C Thank you for the offer! I'll definitely consider it, but my social anxiety is pretty high (especially today.)
Well, in any case, I have put my Discord username on my profile. I’ll leave it to you if you want to send me an invite…
