Here are seven things I remember clearly. None of them happened.
Memory is not a recording device. It’s a reconstruction engine. Every time you remember something, you’re not retrieving it you’re rebuilding it. And each rebuild introduces errors. Tiny ones. Cumulative ones. The kind that change the story without you noticing.
1. The day I read Camus for the first time in a café (Pepsi).
I remember the café. I remember the book a worn paperback of The Stranger. I remember the exact passage that hit me: “In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” I remember looking up from the page and feeling like the room had shifted.
What actually happened: I read that passage on my phone, on a taxi, at 11 PM, on the way home from work. The café is a memory I wanted to have. A more cinematic version of reality. My brain replaced the taxi with a café because the taxi is not a place where revelation is supposed to happen.
2. A conversation with my Mother about reading.
I remember her telling me that books were dangerous. That they put ideas in your head that you couldn’t control. That once you start reading seriously, you can’t go back to the way you thought before.
What actually happened: She never said this. Not in these words. What She said was “don’t spend all your money on books,” which is practical advice from a parent who has seen what financial irresponsibility looks like. My brain took a practical statement and turned it into a philosophical one because the philosophical version is more interesting and, in its own way, more true.
3. The first time I used OpenBSD and felt like I understood what an operating system should be.
I remember the clean boot. The minimal interface. The feeling of using something that wasn’t trying to be anything other than what it was. I remember thinking: this is what software should feel like.
What actually happened: The first time I booted OpenBSD, I couldn’t get my Wi-Fi driver to work and spent four hours reading man pages. The feeling of clarity came later, on the third or fourth attempt. But my memory compressed the struggle into a single moment of understanding because the struggle is boring and the understanding is the point.
4. Telling someone that I wanted to build a blog that mattered.
I remember the conversation. I remember the person nodding. I remember feeling like I had committed to something that I couldn’t back out of.
What actually happened: I told no one. I built this blog in silence. The conversation is a fabrication my brain’s way of giving weight to a decision that was made alone, in private, with no witnesses. But a decision made alone feels less real than a decision made in conversation. So my brain gave me a conversation.
5. The moment I decided I preferred physical books to ebooks.
I remember holding a book and feeling the weight of it. The texture of the pages. The smell. The understanding that this object would outlast me.
What actually happened: I’ve never been that decisive about physical vs. digital. I go back and forth. I own a kindle. I buy physical books. I read on my phone. The “moment” is a narrative convenience. My brain needed a turning point so it invented one.
6. Watching Samurai Champloo with a friend and feeling like I understood something about masculinity.
I remember the couch. The screen. Mugen fighting with that chaotic, beautiful energy. The realization that strength doesn’t have to be polished to be real.
What actually happened: I watched it alone. On a laptop. In bed. At 2 AM. The friend is invented. The couch is invented. The communal aspect of the experience is invented because my brain believes that important realizations should be shared. They shouldn’t. But my brain doesn’t care what should be. It cares what feels right.
7. The first time I wrote something on this blog and felt like it was good.
I remember hitting publish and feeling a rush of satisfaction. The post was about something I can’t remember what but the feeling is vivid. The feeling of creating something that was enough.
What actually happened: I rarely feel like my writing is good. I hit publish and immediately want to revise. The satisfaction is retroactive it comes weeks later, when I read the post again and realize it wasn’t terrible. My memory moved the satisfaction from weeks later to the moment of publication because the story is cleaner that way.
None of these memories are malicious fabrications. They’re improvements. My brain takes reality and edits it for coherence, meaning, and emotional resonance. The edited version is not false it’s just not factual. It’s the meaning of the event, not the event itself.
And maybe that’s fine. Maybe the improved version is the one that matters. The version that carries the weight of what the moment meant, stripped of the noise of what it actually was.
But I want to know: if my memories are edited, and my memories are my identity, then who am I?
Am I the person who lived these events? Or the person my brain has constructed from the edited highlights?
I don’t know.
But I remember deciding that I didn’t need to know. And that memory might be false too.
This post was written from a position of uncertainty. If any of the “what actually happened” sections are themselves inaccurate, the irony is intentional.