The people who talk about their childhood like it was fine but can't remember most of it aren't lying. The absence of memory and the absence of trauma feel identical from the inside until something cracks the seal, and by then the person has built an entire adult identity on the version where nothing happened. - Silicon Canals

"Most people assume that a blank childhood just means a boring one. The conventional wisdom says that we forget what wasn't worth remembering, that a lack of vivid memories is evidence of a lack of vivid events."

"The brain doesn't just passively record and then lose footage. It actively manages what gets stored, what gets retrieved, and what gets sealed behind a wall so thick that the person carrying it mistakes the wall for empty space."

"Psychologists call it childhood amnesia or infantile amnesia, and it refers to the well-documented inability to recall episodic memories from roughly the first three years of life."

Childhood amnesia, or infantile amnesia, refers to the inability to recall episodic memories from the first three years of life due to the developing hippocampus. Many people assume a lack of memories indicates a boring childhood, but this view is incomplete. The brain actively manages memory storage and retrieval, sealing some memories behind walls that can be mistaken for emptiness. The absence of vivid memories can signify more complex psychological processes rather than simply a lack of significant events.

Read at Silicon Canals