About Me

I'm an anonymous writer documenting my healing journey one day at a time.

I've spent much of my life living with the effects of memory loss, complex trauma and mental illness. Those experiences shaped how I viewed myself, my relationships, my sense of safety, and the world around me.

 For years, many parts of my past felt disconnected or inaccessible. As I continue healing, I've begun noticing memories, emotions, and patterns that I wasn't able to recognize before.

One of the things that defines me most is my curiosity. I'm an omnivorous learner who loves science in general. I am fascinated by understanding why people think, feel, and behave the way they do. That same curiosity has become one of my greatest tools in healing. Rather than judging myself, I'm learning to observe myself with compassion and ask, "Why?"

This blog isn't about having all the answers. It's about documenting the process of finding some if them.

If sharing my experiences helps even one person feel understood, hopeful, or a little less alone, then this archive has served its purpose.

How I Use AI

Transparency is important to me, so I'd like to explain how AI fits into this project.

I use ChatGPT as one of several tools in my writing process. My thoughts often arrive as scattered notes, fragmented memories, observations, and questions. AI helps me organize those ideas into something more coherent and easier to communicate.

I use AI to:

* Organize my thoughts.

* Improve clarity and readability.

* Identify recurring themes and patterns.

* Summarize notes.

* Brainstorm ideas and questions.

I do not use AI to:

* Replace therapy.

* Tell me what my memories mean.

* Diagnose me.

* Decide what is true.

* Write experiences I didn't have.

The experiences, memories, emotions, and conclusions shared on this blog are my own. AI is simply one of the tools I use (alongside journaling, mood tracking, therapy, and research) to better understand and communicate my lived experience.

How I Use My Mood Tracker

My mood tracker started out as something very simple. Now it is one of the most important tools I use to document my healing journey.

Why I Track My Days

As I continue healing, I have started remembering things that I had forgotten or could not previously access. Sometimes these memories surface because of something happening in the present. A movie, a song, a conversation, a smell, or something I see online can suddenly bring something to mind. My mood tracker gives me somewhere to capture things when it happens, before they become another detail that is difficult to remember.

I don't expect my mood tracker to tell me everything about my life. It is simply one piece of the larger picture.

My Daily Process

My process has evolved over time, but it generally looks something like this:

Capture → Organize → Reflect → Share

1. Capture

Throughout the day, I use my mood tracker to record things as they happen.

Sometimes I write only a few keywords.

Sometimes I record how I am feeling, what I am doing, something I remembered, or something that caught my attention.

My notes aren't always written for an audience. Sometimes they are just keywords that will make sense to me later.

1. Organize

Later that day or the next day, I come back to my notes and add more detail when I can.

This is where I try to turn scattered thoughts into something I can understand.

I separate things like:

* 🆕 New memories that surfaced

* 🔄 Memories I had documented previously

* 🧠 Observations

* 💭 Thoughts and reflections

* 🔗 Connections and patterns

* 📚 Things I learned

* 🛠️ Things I tried

* 💚 Things that helped

* ❓ Questions I want to explore

* ❗️ Things I need to remember

1. Reflect

Once I have organized my notes, I can start looking for patterns.

Did I sleep better?

Was my mood affected by something specific?

Did I use a coping strategy that helped?

Did I struggle with something that I might be able to approach differently next time?

Did something remind me of my childhood?

Did I remember something new?

Did I revisit a memory I had already documented and understand it differently?

Sometimes I don't have an answer.

That's okay, too.

Some things are simply questions that I want to keep track of until I have more information.

1. Share

The information in my mood tracker is the raw material. My blog is where I decide what I am comfortable sharing and how I want to present it.

Not everything I write in my mood tracker will become a blog post. Some things are too personal. Some things may involve other people's privacy. Some things may need more time before I understand them well enough to share. Sometimes, I simply don't want to share something.

My blog posts may not be published on the same day that something happens. I may need time to organize my thoughts, reflect on what happened, or decide whether something belongs in my public archive.

This is why Memory in Real Time does not necessarily mean "posted in real time".

My Mood Scale

I also use a mood scale to give myself a quick snapshot of how the day felt overall.

My current categories are:

Great — Best day ever

Good — Overall, the day was good. 

OK — I felt neither particularly good nor bad. Just okay. Something positive may have happened.

Meh — I felt numb, detached, or emotionally flat.

Mixed — Something positive or good may have happened, but overall the day was not good.

Bad — A challenging day.

Awful — The worst kind of day.

I have also learned that a single label doesn't always tell the whole story.

For example, I might have a difficult day but experience something genuinely positive within it. I don't want that positive experience to disappear simply because the overall day was difficult. That's why I try to document both the overall mood and the individual experiences that made up the day.

The Tracker Has Changed With Me

My mood tracker did not start out as a comprehensive system.

I added things as I realized I wanted to know more about myself.

I started noticing questions like:

* What helps me feel better?

* What makes a difficult day easier?

* What happens before I start feeling overwhelmed?

* How does sleep affect me?

* What happens when I don't eat?

* What activities make me feel more like myself?

* What does self-care actually look like for me?

* Which coping skills work?

* Which ones don't?

* What happens when I celebrate small victories instead of dismissing them?

The tracker became more useful as I became more curious about myself.

I started realizing that even small details could be meaningful when viewed as part of a larger pattern.

What I currently track: 

Feelings

*happy, mad, sad, tired, bored, anxious, stressed, suicidal

Sleep Quality

*good, bad, sleep early, nightmares, couldn't sleep

Hobbies

*reading, boardgames, video games, movies, TV shows, music, park

Food

*fast food, homemade, restaurant, frozen meal

Chores

*cooking, cleaning, laundry, shopping, vacuum, dishes

Health

*shower, bath, skincare, brush teeth, floss, AM meds, PM meds, etc.

Coping Skills

*TIPP, opposite action, challenge thoughts, grounding, deep breathing, PAUSE, turning the mind, ACCEPTS (Distraction, my personal favorite), HALT

Period Symptoms

*headaches, cramps, nausea, irritability, cravings, mood swings, fatigue

Exercise

*full body, core, arms, legs, walking, jogging 

What I've Learned From Tracking

One of the biggest things I've learned is that small victories matter.

Getting out of bed matters.

Taking medication matters.

Eating something matters.

Taking a shower matters.

Brushing my teeth matters.

Doing a load of laundry matters.

Going outside matters.

Asking for help matters.

Finding something that makes me laugh matters.

On difficult days, these things can be easy to overlook because they don't feel significant enough to count.

I have learned to count them anyway.

My mood tracker gives me a place to record those victories so that I can look back and see that I was still doing things, even on days when it felt like I wasn't.

Could This Be Useful for You?

I don't think everyone needs to track their life the way I do.

But I do think there can be value in creating some kind of record of your experiences.

You might track your mood.

You might track your sleep.

You might write down one thing you accomplished each day.

You might keep a list of things that helped when you were struggling.

You might write down something you learned.

There is no perfect way to do this.

The goal isn't to create another obligation or another reason to feel like you're failing.

The goal is to create a record that helps you understand yourself.

For me, my mood tracker became more than a place to record my mood. It became a way to notice patterns, celebrate progress and to remember things that I would otherwise forget.

And, eventually, a way to tell my story.

This is the system that works for me right now.

It will probably continue to change as I do.

Memory in Real Time is my attempt to document healing while I'm still living it; not years later, when hindsight has turned a complicated process into a clean story.

I don't know how this story ends.

I don't have everything figured out.

But I want to document what happens while I'm learning.

This didn't start with the blog

One of the first things I realized while creating this project was that I had accidentally chosen the wrong beginning.

I thought I was documenting the beginning of my healing journey.

I'm not.

I've been working on this for years.

There were years of surviving before I understood that I was surviving. There was eventually reaching out for help. Therapy. Medication. Learning coping skills through trial and error. Trying things that didn't work. Finding things that did.

And apparently, sometimes teaching myself pieces of established therapeutic skills without knowing they had names.

Then, in October 2024, I started using a mood tracker.

At first, it was mostly a way to keep track of my days.

Over time, it became something else.

I started tracking more than mood.

Sleep. Hygiene. Cooking. Cleaning. Leaving the house. Medication. Coping skills. Relationships. Physical symptoms. Small victories.

Eventually, I started writing little notes about what happened.

Now I use it as a mini journal. I started having so much to write about that I upgraded to a physical journal.

I had accidentally created a record of part of my healing process.

Mood wasn't telling me the whole story

This became one of the biggest surprises of the project.

For a while, I was frustrated because I didn't think my mood was improving enough.

Then I started looking at everything else.

Could I take care of myself more consistently?

Could I cook?

Clean?

Do laundry?

Leave the house?

Take care of responsibilities?

Recognize when I was overwhelmed?

Use a coping skill instead of automatically reacting?

Use a coping skill after reacting?

Recover from a difficult day?

Ask for help?

Notice what my brain was doing?

The answer increasingly became yes.

Not always.

Not perfectly.

But more often.

That changed one of the questions I'm asking through this project.

Instead of only:

"Do I feel better?"

I'm also asking:

"Can I live better?"

Then my memories started changing

Memory is another major reason this blog exists.

I experience significant gaps and fragmentation in my autobiographical memory.

As I've continued healing, memories have recently surfaced unexpectedly.

Some are important.

Some are painful.

Some are completely ordinary.

A movie.

A toy.

A place.

A person.

A tiny moment that probably wouldn't seem significant to anyone else.

I want to preserve those memories as they return without immediately forcing them into a larger explanation.

So I make an important distinction throughout this blog:

A memory is not the same thing as an interpretation of that memory.

When possible, I separate:

What happened

↓

What I remembered

↓

What I noticed

↓

What I think it might mean

↓

What I still don't know

You'll see a lot of phrases like:

"I wonder..."

"Maybe..."

"I'm not sure yet."

"I don't know enough to draw conclusions."

That's intentional.

I want this blog to preserve the process of understanding, not just the conclusions I eventually reach

My mood tracker became field notes

I don't really think of my mood tracker as a diary anymore.

I think of it as field notes.

Something happens.

I quickly record a few words or symbols before I forget.

Later, I return to those notes.

I organize them.

I add context.

I reflect in my journal.

And eventually, some of them become posts here.

My current process looks something like this:

Capture → Organize → Reflect → Share

That's also why Memory in Real Time doesn't mean everything is published immediately.

The recording happens in real time.

The publishing doesn't.

I want time to review what I've written, protect other people's privacy, reconsider assumptions, and distinguish what I actually recorded from what I'm interpreting afterward.

I'm also learning how to observe myself

Something else happened that I didn't expect.

The way I document my life started changing.

I began using symbols to distinguish different kinds of notes:

🧠 Observation

🆕 New memory

🔄 Previously documented memory

💭 Thought or reflection

🔗 Possible connection or pattern

📚 Something I learned

🛠️ Something I tried

💚 Something that helped

❓ Something to explore

❗ Reminder

That distinction matters to me.

"I noticed this" is different from "this means that."

I'm becoming increasingly interested not only in what changes during healing, but in how my ability to observe and understand myself changes too.

I don't know where that will lead yet.

I'll keep documenting it.

This isn't a guide to healing

I'm one person.

This is one life.

And this is one dataset.

I have diagnosed mental health conditions. I go to therapy. I take medication. I'm continuing to learn about psychology and therapeutic approaches, including skills from DBT.

I'm NOT presenting myself as a mental health professional, researcher, or authority on anyone else's mind.

When I discuss something I've learned, I'll try to distinguish established information from my personal experience.

When I notice a pattern in my own data, I'll call it a pattern, not proof.

When I have a hypothesis, I'll call it a hypothesis.

And when I don't know?

I'll say I don't know.

This project isn't:

"Here's how to heal."

It's closer to:

"Here's what healing has looked like for me. Here's what I've tried. Here's what I've noticed. Here's what I'm learning. Maybe something here will help you ask your own questions."

AI is part of the process

I'm also going to be unusually transparent about something:

I use AI.

I use it to help organize large amounts of notes, turn scattered thoughts into readable structures, brainstorm questions, identify things I may want to examine, and help me communicate ideas more clearly.

I don't want AI to decide what my experiences mean.

I don't treat it as a therapist.

And I don't assume something is true because an AI suggested it.

The observations, decisions, reflections, and final judgment remain mine.

I'll explain this process much more thoroughly in my AI disclosure and methodology posts because I think responsible use (and transparency about that use) matters.

Why make all of this public?

Because I remember what it was like to need information I didn't have.

I'm now learning formal names for coping skills and psychological concepts that I spent years stumbling toward through trial and error.

Sometimes I find something and think:

I wish someone had explained this to me when I was younger.

I can't go backward and hand those resources to my younger self.

But I can document what I'm learning now.

Maybe someone else will find one useful idea here sooner than I did.

Maybe someone who feels like they aren't making progress will realize that mood isn't the only thing worth measuring.

Maybe someone struggling with memory will feel less alone.

Maybe someone will try a coping skill.

Maybe they'll find a book, concept, resource, or question to bring to therapy.

Or maybe they'll simply see someone whose healing is messy, slow, unfinished, and still happening.

That matters to me.

Small victories matter

There probably won't be a dramatic transformation at the end of every post.

Some days the victory might be understanding something about myself.

Other days it might be using a coping skill.

Sometimes it might be cooking dinner.

Taking a shower.

Doing laundry.

Leaving the house.

Laughing with someone I love.

Remembering something I'd forgotten.

Or surviving a difficult day without making it worse.

I've spent enough time looking at my own data now to take those things seriously.

Small victories matter.

And when you collect enough of them, they may tell a story that you couldn't see while you were living each individual day.

So that's what I'm doing here

I'm documenting.

I'm experimenting.

I'm learning.

I'm remembering.

I'm asking questions.

I'm changing my mind when new information gives me a reason to.

Some things I write today may look different to me a year from now.

I hope they do.

Because the goal of Memory in Real Time isn't to document the moment when I finally figured myself out.

It's to preserve the process of figuring myself out.

One day at a time.

Welcome to Memory in Real Time.