I think trauma does mess with the memory, but I had a pretty happy childhood and I can't remember huge chunks of it either. I have certain very vivid memories, like hearing the foghorns in Lake Michigan when I first woke up, or what our backyard looked like when I was really little, etc. but I don't remember most of it. I remember what the house we moved into when I was nine looked like, but I can't remember anything about the move there. I can't remember a single birthday party or any specific class lessons or any long stretches of time. I have little precise snippets, but nothing in between them. This is how I remember everything, including my 20s, 30s and 40s.

That's just how I remember stuff--I thought it was that way for everyone. Do other people remember stuff differently? Like, do you all remember all of your birthday parties from childhood?

Like, do you all remember all of your birthday parties from childhood?

God, no. If there are people who do, I'm going to find that freaky. (I mean, I know there are Marilu Henner-like people who do.)

Scrappy, your memory is like mine, a highlights reel.

Scrappy, your memory is like mine, a highlights reel.

Pretty much, including the more recent decades, or even last week.

Yep Scrappy, I'm with you.

Well, that's good to know, anyway. I guess my memory is like a highlights reel, except I can't figure why those things are the "highlights".

I'm not assuming that other people have photographic memories of the entirety of their childhoods. I mean, I'm sure some do, but they're the exception, not the rule. But tests using PET scans have confirmed that memory is impaired in people who've experienced trauma, in a way that's different from just not retaining everything with perfect clarity.

I have a memory of being very very young and sitting on the counter in an office somewhere, like you put your three-year-old on the counter at the county clerk's office. I guess that was impressive my very young mind.

(Used voice recognition, sorry about its errors that I'm just going to leave there.)

I am seething with rage. I think that what I should do is drive out of Eugene, and just try to not dwell on this and to try to have a nice time for the rest of my trip. May I vent please?

My Airbnb place was nice, and I walked to the nearby pool and lap swam for the first time in ages for about 45 minutes. It felt great. There is an astonishing patisserie at which I just bought an unbelievable eclair. The route from my Airbnb to The Patisserie goes right by the grocery store where my niece's boyfriend works.

I had my doubts that this was a good idea, and now I think it was a really bad idea, but I did. I wrote a note saying hello Julian, goodbye Julian. He happened to be there and I handed it to him, and said oh I'll give this to you in person. He smiled and gave me a hug and said hey how are you doing? I said hey back and said, I'm very perturbed. He said oh I'm sorry our phone was out over the weekend. I stared and said I wouldn't have come to Eugene except to see niece. I've been texting. (Niece has made a BFD in the past about how she will only text, when I've been here in prior years she would refuse to call my cell phone or email me on my tablet.) This is where my Consciousness narrowed because I started getting so angry. I think he shrugged and I Shrugged back. Then I said, ask (niece) sometime about the time when (niece's mother)'s parents let (niece's mother) kill a puppy. Then I left.

I wish I hadn't said anything about the puppy or more than hi and bye.

I'm talking/ writing this to keep myself from writing a note and going over to their apartment and taping it to their door. I think that niece is doing to me the kind of thing that her mother did to my brother, and did to the rest of our family. I stayed in touch with both nieces when they were little girls, longer than anyone in the family, because their mother had been so horrible to everyone except me up to a point. Their mother got on the phone one time after I'd been talking to the little girls ( little kids are really hard to talk to on the phone!) and she said, you mentioned your brother's name. I can't have them hearing his name. Therefore I'm going to hang up the phone and I'm going to punish the girls by not letting them go to an ice skating birthday party this afternoon. I could hear the girls wailing in the background. I quit keeping in touch with the girls after that - she won, by punishing the girls to punish me. What an unbelievably effed up thing to do, in so many ways.

I wish I'd been able to hold my tongue, and I've talked myself into definitely not writing a note, because I think niece is doing this deliberately and probably getting some thrill out of getting me angry and so focused on what she is or isn't doing.

The puppy story is, niece's mother C wanted a puppy, but her parents told her if she got one she had to take care of it. They got her a puppy, she didn't take care of it, and her parents let her dehydrate and starved it to death.

I've been appalled at that story forever, but it just came up in this situation, what kind of values does that reflect, what kind of family would think that that was an appropriate way to teach your child a lesson in responsibility. Of course my niece has no manners, and worse, she really is her mother's daughter.

Thank you Katie, I'm really tempted, but it really would be feeding the troll, And as I'm saying this, it's so clear to me that my niece is an effing troll.

Her boyfriend is a really nice guy and I really hope she never does to him this kind of thing, because no one deserves it, I don't deserve it, my brother didn't deserve it, what my niece did is effed-up what her mother did is effed-up what her parents did is effed-up.

Oh, I agree with you, Teppy. A friend of mine had a father who was a convicted pedophile and could literally remember NOTHING from his childhood. He was in therapy to try to recover some of those memories when he died.