I hope everyone’s enjoying the holiday season – here’s a blog post I found in my drafts folder from January 2013 (about a year ago). I decided to publish it today x
You can file this post under ‘stuff I bet you didn’t know about Kez’…unless you’ve known me since forever and then I just want to give you a big hug for ‘getting’ me 😉
I have this thing. I don’t want to go as far as to call it a complex or a neurosis (even if that’s what it is, can we not call it that?), but it does affect my life occasionally (but persistently). You see, I have a reeeeallly good long term memory. I remember faces and/or names, events, conversations and almost everything else reeeeallly well – forever. As you can imagine, this makes me very popular with my husband hahaha. Anyway, because of this very average super power I don’t expect other people to remember as much as I do. In fact, sometimes I kind of feel like a loser for being able to recount everything that’s ever happened in the history of me knowing someone (even if I only met them a couple of times). Like people will think I’m the biggest stalker/weirdo in the history of people. I don’t want to be that person who strikes up an awkward street conversation with, “Oh hey, remember that time on the 5th July, 2008 when you were eating the spaghetti at that cafe and I had the green salad because I was trying to be good, and we were talking about the price of fish and you were wearing that dress with the green and blue stripes, but I was wearing shorts and a singlet with the picture of the sunset on it…” while the other person is all like, WHOA. WHOA. WHAT ELSE HAVE YOU CATALOGUED ABOUT ME IN YOUR CRAZY BRAIN, YOU CRAZY LADY?!
So of course, I dial a lot back. I’m not completely socially clueless.
Also? I am ashamed to say that I have it in my head that I must definitely look different to how I looked the last time someone saw me, so they may not recognise me. Which is bonkers, because sometimes I think that even when I saw a person every day at work for years of my life, or it was like a month ago or something.
I don’t expect anyone to ever remember me. I mean, also, I’m Asian. People keep telling me we all look the same. The amount of times I get asked if I’m *insert name of any other random Asian person here*, or *Asian person*’s sister. I don’t want to confuse people.
Geez!
So basically it’s like I believe I’m in some sort of witness protection program where they change the witness’s identity and facial features and they must live a totally different life to the one they lived before.
Every time I see someone I used to know (or an acquaintance), I do that thing where I agonise over whether to go and say hello. Will they even know who I am? How awkward might the conversation be? I’m not even drunk!
Just the other day, a former work colleague approached me. He double checked it was me in a very respectful manner and he really put himself out there, considering we didn’t interact a massive amount while working for the same organisation (I was only there on and off over the period of one year). I applaud him, by the way. It felt really nice to be remembered and maybe I need to try harder to be just as brave.
Also, please know that if it feels like someone you know/remember appears to ignore you or not notice you…perhaps they aren’t trying to be rude. Perhaps you haven’t done anything wrong or annoyed them in any way. Perhaps you are really memorable and special. Maybe that person is just one big old chicken and they’re trying to work on it.
So now you know that about me, what can you share about yourselves?
