I've lost a lot of my memories, but can remember the general vibe. There are a handful of crystal clear memories though. I'm only mid-30s though
this post was submitted on 19 Jan 2026
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I'm an old fucker and can remember my earliest memories still. You have to do it though, because memories become less clear over time if unused. Unfortunately, we spend less time recalling memories because of our current over-stimulation in this entertainment rich world. Most of us do not let ourselves be bored (almost ever) now.
Tonight I played a game I hadn't played since the early 90's and just the graphics and sounds really brought back nostalgic feelings.
You can lose your older memories without losing your sense of self. That's based more on recent experiences than early childhood anyway.
I'm 56 and find that my long term memory is sometimes better than my short term memory.
I'm nearing 50 and found it seems I recall about the same of being a kid as I did 20 years ago, but don't recall 20 years ago as much as I'd think so now. Though yes long term seems better cemented in memory than day to day lately.
Mean if I forgot the kid stuff I wouldn't realize it cause no one around that would tell me either so...well I'm used to being wrong too.
44 and can remember lots about what I did as a 3-4 year old including first day at kindy and school, Christmases etc. phone numbers, birthdays, dates and everything. Can recall much of my time throughout my teens and 20s too.
Don't ask me what I did last weekend though. Time goes much faster as you get older (perceptively) and I don't feel different but know I'm getting older because I'm watching my kids grow up into (mostly) functional humans. Often I'm shocked it's the weekend again.
The way memory works, your brain constructs the memory based on stuff from the last time you thought about it, mixed with other random shit.
You're never remembering "the" event. You're retelling yourself a story like a game of telephone. The past is gone.
I don't feel like this is entirely true. I have some memories that play out more like shorts, that have always been very clear and never change in detail. They're just engraved there, some of them can be easily corroborated among multiple people and/or video footage
My dad almost died recently (he got better). The experience lead to several vivid memories from my childhood resurfacing. Memories I forgot I forgot. I would have remembered them if I had a reason to I think, but I had no reason to and so I didn't until then.
It also made me realise that while previously I thought of my life as a continuous experience, I now feel like there's a gap in there somewhere. The child me and the present me are separated my more than just time filled with stuff. And there may be more gaps, breaking my life into even smaller pieces now that I think about it.
It's all still in threre, I don't think I've really forgotten anything, but I don't have a reason to remember a lot of stuff from the past so I just don't.
My 90yo grandmother tells me stories of her childhood all the time. Her earliest memories are of when she was around 2-3yo, and she absolutely hasn’t lost her sense of self at all. She’s sharp as a tack, honestly. I think it just really depends on the person
You start your life by forgetting your past. All the times you fell over, were hungry or overtired, or shat your pants as a baby or toddler. You don't remember that time unless something happened that's traumatizing in the extreme. Somewhere between that age and when you start school you start retaining memories. Not all of them but enough to reminisce. You're growing still so every day is a new experience and not everything makes the cut. And then you age. Once you cross 40 you'll notice a lot more that you cannot remember why you went to the garage but you can remember all the teachers from your elementary school days. Most of your classmates too but that guy's name in Accounting who you talk to every other day is nowhere to be found. And when you reach an age where death is becoming likely every day, you reminisce and you remember lots of stuff from ages ago but not what you had for breakfast. Dementia fucks with you but they remember their moody teenage music tastes and react more to that than their own offspring.
Memory retention is not a linear thing.
I remember breastfeeding, learning to crawl and walk, the intense frustration I felt while trying to communicate before I learned how to speak.
I remember breastfeeding, learning to crawl and walk
No way.
Howwww.
My earliest memory was something... I think was when I was like 3, I remember seeing photos dated 2005... (probably still in some drawers somewhere) so I was visiting Hong Kong from Guangzhou...
I think we went there to vacation(?) + meet with relatives from abroad in the US
I really only remember
- cable cars
- the hotel room that you need a special card thing to access and turn on the electricity in the room (I think it must've been some rfid thing)
- Double-deck buses
- Trolleys(?)
That's about it
I remember it kinda feel "western"? (I mean of course it felt western after 99 years of british rule lol)
I think I already knew how to say basic words in Cantonese at this point so I remember asking a question about the weird rfid hotel card thing...
But like... nah how the f do you remember breastfeeding and being a toddler?
I have zero memories of pre-speaking age of myself.
I guess having a language make it easier to form memories? Or maybe vice versa? Being able to form memories make it possible to retain a language? Idk.
I just never forgot.
I have lots of memories from when I was a baby, a toddler. Mundane things, like sitting in a high chair eating Cheerios and drinking juice from a sippy cup, playing with my toys, crawling around the house. More impactful ones, like when my parents were trying to get me to walk, which I didn’t want to do, but couldn’t argue yet, so I kept attempting to show them that walking was foolish because I could crawl much faster. My first word, “trash,” which I picked up from watching my mother sort the mail, and initially thought applied to everything made of paper. How I figured out how to escape my drop-side crib, and would wander around the house at night while my parents slept. When my mother came home from the hospital with my younger sister and I first held her, and promptly dropped her, when I was just shy of 2. How jealous I was that my mother weaned me because of the new baby. Teaching my sister how to escape the crib, so she could play with me at night. Being angry that she wasn’t careful like me, and got caught escaping the crib. My first day of pre-school, which I desperately did not want to attend. Starting a fight in pre-school, I beat a boy with a wicker basket because he tried to play with the building blocks I was using.
You don’t need language to think, or form memories. Small children often are able to remember and recount these sorts of things, they just forget them as they age.
Oh, I just recalled a good one. A memory of a word from before I could speak.
My mother had gestational diabetes, and I was born a very large and fat baby. For the first few months of my life, my parents called me “Baby Huey,” a reference to a 1950s cartoon character. They stopped calling me that long before I could speak, and then forgot they ever had.
I brought this up later in my childhood, because I wanted to know what a Bell UH-1 Iroquois helicopter, the only Huey I knew about then, had to do with baby me.
I'm 39...there are some things that I remember vividly, some cloudy and most I just don't know
I’m almost 50 and I remember a lot of my childhood. I remember riding in a car with my mother down the main street in town and not being able to read signs. So like 1983-84. I remember a bunch of other things from that far back. Sights, sounds, feelings. More the later you go. A lot of the late 80s and beyond.
I don’t and I’m 30. Almost anything before the age of 7 and quite little between 7 and 14.
But AFAIK most people do remember quite some stuff from their childhood for the rest of their life. And forget some of course. I guess it varies.
I remember age 8 to 12 a lot, but I barely remember before age 8... but I had a traumatic event in the city I lived in from birth to 8 years old so maybe those memories got repressed idk. Age 12 - 17 was so uneventful I kinda not have much. I'm in my early 20s btw
I have this recurring paranoia that I'll eventually forget everything, and that thought just troubles me a lot. I hope I finish my memoir before I forget it lol.
CW existential dread
Spoiler
It’s a very hard thing to accept. The grief of your own death.
All of this: the people you love, you hate, friends, partners, families, is temporary. Even the memories. Even the journal you wrote, the picture you took fades away. Nothing can beat the heat death of the universe.
The only thing meaningful and beautiful is the positive experience you and you can bring to other people. At some moments of spacetime, someone is happy because of you.
It’s hard. Because the death takes our lifetime. That’s why we cherish it, we express how we feel. And also, it’s hard to just say goodbye even though we know it’s inevitable. But we have to learn to let it go.
If anything makes you feel better, all the memories are still there, becoming part of You.
it seems like they mostly remember the 'vibe' along with some hazy memories. kinda unrelated to OP but my grandparents started showing me AI generated pics/vids claming it's "just like his childhood"..
AI generated pics/vids
Ngl this AI stuff is why I'm kinda sus of writing a journal/diary digitally...
feels like someone can easily manipulate it to implant a false memory when I go back to read it
You pack a lot of memories in there. Your mind will compartmentalize them. The packing of time into memories is a strange sensation but I don’t think I’ve lost my sense of self. The memories are less vivid and feel further away as time passes. Your memories together with your thoughts form your sense of self, that’s hopefully not something you lose.
I spent a lot of time with my grandfather in his final days, and he was hitting me with stories from when he was like 4-on. A lot of good memories and a lot of bad memories.
I'm 31 and remember a ton from my childhood. Which makes sense bc I have to remind myself that I'm a grown man and not a kid in social situations all the time. (like when I have to go to my child's school and my brain flips where I'm overly respectful to the teachers and almost raise my hand to speak to them)
My wife had a rough childhood and can barely remember anything from those years due to mental blocks I guess.
Tldr idk it depends I guess
Going to parents evening was wild, suddenly I'm bigger/older than most of the teachers.
You can still be overly respectful to the teachers -- I'm sure they appreciate it!
(Especially when there are parents who seem to treat the teachers as retail workers...)
True. I guess I mean my brain goes back into student mode and I tense up talking to them.
Yes, yes and yes…
Like usual with us humans and our fickle minds, YMMV.
There are many factors that can impact this, though I would clarify - you aren't losing memories, they're there, just harder to access. You aren't losing your sense of self, it's evolving - who you are as a person is constantly changing.
For me personally, as someone with aphantasia I've never really been in touch with my memories in the first place. I've been very much a "in the moment" person - despite that my past experiences do define me, even if I don't know why.
I don't really but have always been bad at that. My wife on the other hand has countless memories I think from as early as 3-4. I mostly forget everything before grade 5 or 6.
I may or may not be Old, depending on your definition, but I'm 43 and I remember my childhood very well.
I asked my mom (75) about something a while back related to the late 50's and while her memory is getting a bit "senior", she had no problem answering my question.
For me I have only some memories from before I got my fist smartphone. From that my brain can recall much more when I look at old pics that from before that age.
I think kids born after say 2005 will have so many photos that they will remember much more than any of the previous generations.
Lol, idk why but I never really knew where to put all my photos and kinda never stored them or deleted them when out of storage, like... it kinda felt like a chore to store them... so I just treated it like a random school notebook... i.e. to be thrown away...
Maybe I'm just afraid of the past and constantly wanna run away from it? Idk. LOTs of trauma both at home and in school. So maybe that...
Now I kinda regretted never storing those photos...
Everyone loses a lot of memories. The brain only stores what's important. You'll keep your most defining memories until Alzheimers starts destroying your brain.
This is a good question and I'll be interested to see what others have to say. One thing I've noticed is that memories can transform into 'memories of memories'. What I remember is not the felt impression of something but what I subsequently told or showed myself about it. And it doesn't even just apply to childhood - I have same thing for big events in my life from last couple of years.
I do find that it's possible to consciously dig deeper and unearth forgotten memories though.
I'll also add that I think what constitutes a sense of 'self' is more than just memory.
I have an earliest memory that I wonder if it's just my memory of me recounting it at this point. And another memory of being attacked by a dog that I believe was a dream that got mixed up with reality because the neighbor's dog scared me. 'Memories of memories' seems accurate the further back I try to remember.
There's a video I watched that demonstrated VHS quality degrading by generation. And that to me was the accurate depiction of how human memory can work like. Every waking hour, we are making new memories and those new memories have a chance of overwriting the old ones as we grow older. New experiences, new people, new places, even going different routes than your usual all can have that impact.
Some people's memories are better than others. In my case, I can't really recall a lot from my earlier childhood, it is all just bits and pieces. My teenage years is about as far back as my memory goes, my young adulthood is more remembered and the last 5 years are like yesterday to me at times.