How do you know you’ve forgotten something if you don’t remember you knew it in the first place?

I’ve always been suspicious of my own memory; unsure if something actually happened or whether it was a dream, feeling convinced I know someone but can’t for the life of me think where, you know, the usual troubles that come from a busy life that is well into its middle age.

But recently, more so than previously, it felt like there are gaps in my knowledge. I can even picture them. Actual black shapes in my memory where things used to be, I’m sure of it. If there was nothing there previously then there wouldn’t be an obvious space where nothing is now, would there..? It’s not like dry sand on a beach where when you dig a hole the surrounding sand cascades in to fill it, it’s more like cutting a gingerbread man out of rolled out pastry – you see the outline of where he was, not the soon-to-be-baked biscuit himself, but you know he was there.

How do you go about finding out what was in that now blank space though? Memory isn’t linear like counting to ten. It’s not like counting up to five then next counting from seven to ten – it’s easy to see the ‘six’-sized gap in that string. It’s not even like memory is sequential. Yes, certain things may trigger a thought of something, but it’s not like I can retread my steps through every thought I’ve had until I get to the missing section.

So what do I do? Wait until life throws an obvious trigger at me and it becomes glaringly obvious that it points to a particular blank space? That could take forever, or in fact very likely not happen at all. And in all honesty if that’s the case is there any real problem with not having that knowledge anyway? What if all that’s missing is one of those pointless curriculum inclusions from GCSEs with no practical application beyond it? What if, for example, the missing section just covered medieval crop rotation in Somerset? No big loss. But it’s a big ‘what if’…

Besides that, where did it go? It could have vanished theoretically. Like accidentally deleting a Word document. But there’s an obvious shape to it! Like it’s been lifted out of position and put somewhere else. That in itself leads to a wealth of questions I’m still a way off being able to ask, let alone answer.