The wall

I am hoping this post is a marker of an obstacle that I will overcome, rather than the beginning of the end of this experiment in remembering every day that passes.

But I have to admit that these past few days I've found I keep coming up with blanks as I review the memory tags pinned to my mental calendar. I thought it was too much wine and not even sleep, but less of the former and more of the latter hasn't resolved the problem.

When I have difficulty it is with recent tags rather than old ones, which makes it feel that it is this process of remembering that is breaking down. A few times I've felt it better not to review past days than to suffer the frustration of missing images. The pleasure of the perspective remembering every day has been giving me changes to distress on these occasions.

I've felt I'm tempted to let the days go, to accept a few blanks; or to write down the memory tags before I forget some of them forever.

So far I've not given into that temptation; laying down to sleep last night I was able to scan back through the past three months, finding all the images.

But there is no point making this experiment an ordeal; I may be forced to accept that despite the feeling that remembering was becoming easier, I've come to my limit.

At the moment I feel a bit like the narrator in the story "Flowers for Algernon", who was given a drug that boosted his intelligence, only for it to drop away again.

I may be returning to living with a fog of memories, unable sometimes to remember what I was doing this day last week, this day last month. It makes me sad to think that may be true.

But I hope my brain will develop a better way of forming memories, that the process of remembering will be transformed. I hope I have hit a wall that will crumble if I persevere.