in search of stories

 I was chatting with a friend recently when I had a sudden realization: I don't remember things from my own past in terms of stories. 

Let me try and explain this. While some people can narrate incidents in their lives with blow-by-blow description as a series of events from start to finish, I experience past incidents more like snapshots, or "vignettes." For example, I remember walking the three miles to school with my brother when he was 18 and I was 15, during Ramadan, watching the sun rise above the horizon haze of harmattan, the feel of the dust in my mouth and the scent of cookfires wafting around us. There is no series of events, though, no beginning or end. I suppose we started at home and finished at school, but nothing took place in the middle except for our walking. I could describe this to you in detail, but it's not a story. 

From another angle, I can remember on my 13th birthday, the van that took us to school broke down about halfway to school, and we had to walk the rest of the way, making us late. My science teacher, Mr. Busse, was irritated by our being late, and I feel like maybe I missed a quiz or something. And then I had to go out into our class "garden" to water the row of plants I was supposed to be growing with Oksana. In the dry season. Which meant hauling buckets to and from the nearest spigot when the city water was on. That's all. I can remember this happened, but I can't tell it as a story because I have no details in my mind. It's not a narrative with any meaning or message. It just happened.

It's like my memories are one or the other: just a brief explanation of events without detail and sensory memory; or a snapshot of sensory memory without a series of events. I have very, very few memories that include both a series of events and descriptions that I can enmesh into what most people would call a story.

And I know it's not about my age and fading memory. I do remember things, sometimes vividly. Nor is it about my writing ability, as I feel fairly confident in my skills to convey my thoughts. It's just that my memories aren't stored in my brain in story format.

On some level I wonder if this is part of something bigger in my brain. When I was a child, pre-adolescence, I liked to write stories. But as I grew into my writing as a teenager, I started to only enjoy writing memoirs or retelling existing stories. And now I couldn't come up with an interesting story from my imagination to save my life. If you gave me a plot and some key characters, I could probably write you a story, but if you expected me to create something from scratch, I don't think I could do it. Did my imagination just switch off when I turned 13? Or does it have to do with my inability to visualize things in my head, aphantasia? I have no idea.

All I can tell you is that with very few exceptions, I cannot find stories to tell. I can describe to you the sensory memories I have--what things smelled, looked, tasted, sounded, and felt like--but I have no stories. And this makes me incredibly sad.