Unreliable Memories - How Real Are They Anyway?

 

Memory is a slippery accomplice. It feels solid while we are standing inside it, but the moment we try to pin it down on paper it dissolves like mist under sunlight. We tell ourselves that we remember clearly. We are certain we know what was said, how the room looked, what color the sky was. Yet the more we revisit a memory, the more it shifts under our feet. Details rearrange themselves. Motives become tidier. Conversations sharpen into neat dialogue that probably never existed in such elegant form.

This is where memoir becomes both thrilling and dangerous.

We grow up believing that memory is a recording device. We imagine it as a kind of internal camera, faithfully capturing events and storing them in pristine condition. When we reach back into the archive of our past, we expect to retrieve a file and play it back exactly as it happened. Neuroscience has made it clear that this simply is not how memory works. Memory is not a recording. It is a reconstruction. Each time we recall something, we rebuild it from fragments - sensory impressions, emotional residues, stories we have told before, and even things other people have suggested to us.

That means every act of remembering is also an act of rewriting.

This realization unsettles writers, especially those attempting memoir. The genre carries a moral weight. We feel obligated to tell the truth. We fear being accused of embellishment or deceit. We have all seen the public shaming that follows when a memoirist is exposed for fabricating episodes. The backlash can be brutal because readers enter memoir with a contract in mind. They believe they are being told what really happened.

But what does “really happened” mean if the instrument through which we access the past is inherently unstable?

When you write a memoir about something that occurred thirty years ago, you are not transcribing an event. You are translating a feeling across time. You are assembling the fragments of your younger self and trying to understand them with the vocabulary of your current self. The memory you hold now is not the same as the experience you had then. It is filtered through maturity, regret, insight, and hindsight. It is infused with everything you have learned since.

The moment you put that memory into words, you shape it again.

Dialogue presents the most obvious example. Nobody remembers conversations verbatim from decades past. We remember the gist. We remember the sting of a particular sentence or the warmth of a certain tone. When memoirists recreate dialogue, they are reconstructing the emotional truth of what was said. They are capturing the meaning rather than the literal transcript. If they were to write, “He said something dismissive,” the scene would collapse into abstraction. So they choose words that convey the force of the dismissal. Is that fiction. Or is it a faithful rendering of the impact.

The ethical line does not lie in whether every syllable is exact. It lies in intention.

If you invent an event that never occurred to heighten drama, that is fabrication. If you merge two similar conversations into one scene to clarify the narrative, that is compression. If you reconstruct dialogue to express what was communicated in spirit, that is interpretation. All writing involves selection. Even journalism involves framing. The memoirist’s task is not to provide a court transcript but to offer a coherent account of lived experience.

Still, there is a deeper philosophical unease beneath the craft question.

What is memory, really?

Memory is not just data storage. It is identity maintenance. It is the story you tell yourself about who you are. Strip away memory and you strip away continuity. You would wake each day as a stranger to your own life. That means memory is not only about accuracy. It is about coherence. We shape our memories to preserve a sense of self. We smooth contradictions. We justify choices. We reinterpret failures as necessary steps. The mind protects itself.

That does not mean we are liars. It means we are human.

Consider childhood memories. Many of us have vivid recollections from early years that cannot possibly be as precise as they feel. We remember the wallpaper pattern, the smell of a classroom, the angle of sunlight in a kitchen. Yet research suggests that early childhood memory is particularly unreliable. Some of what we “remember” may be stories retold by family members. Some may be photographs we have internalized. Over time, the source of the memory becomes irrelevant. The image feels like ours.

Does that make it false?

Not entirely. It makes it layered.

Memoir exists within that layering. It acknowledges that we are not objective historians of our own lives. We are narrators trying to make sense of what we lived through. The goal is not forensic precision. The goal is emotional truth. If you write about a painful breakup from twenty years ago, you cannot reconstruct the exact weather conditions unless you consult external records. But you can reconstruct the loneliness, the confusion, the way your chest felt hollow. That interior reality is the core of memoir.

Some critics argue that if nobody else remembers an event the way you do, then your version is suspect. But every experience is subjective. Two siblings can grow up in the same household and carry radically different memories of their childhood. One recalls warmth and laughter. The other recalls tension and fear. Which is correct. Both are correct within their respective interior worlds.

Memory is not a shared photograph. It is a private lens.

This brings us to the question that often haunts memoirists late at night. If it was so long ago that nobody else remembers clearly, what does it matter. Why be scrupulous about detail if the witnesses are gone or the collective memory has faded. The answer lies not in external verification but in personal integrity. Writing memoir is an act of self definition. Even if no one can challenge your account, you are still accountable to yourself. The process is about honesty with your own motives and emotions.

However, honesty does not require paralysis.

There is a practical reality to storytelling. Life does not unfold in neat arcs. It is chaotic, repetitive, and full of dead ends. To craft a readable memoir, you must shape experience into narrative. That means compressing timelines, selecting representative incidents, and occasionally altering identifying details to protect privacy. These are not betrayals of truth. They are tools of clarity. The problem arises when the shaping distorts the underlying reality rather than illuminating it.

You must ask yourself a simple question. Am I clarifying the truth or manufacturing it?

The metaphysical question runs even deeper. Do things exist if they only happened in my mind? Suppose you experienced humiliation in a classroom as a child. Perhaps the teacher’s remark was mild by objective standards, but in your memory it carries enormous weight. That moment shaped your self confidence. It influenced decisions. It altered the trajectory of your life. Even if no one else recalls it or regards it as significant, it exists in your internal history. Its effects are real.

Existence is not limited to public record.

Inner experience leaves marks on behavior, relationships, and self perception. The fact that others do not validate your memory does not erase its influence. When you write memoir, you are not arguing a legal case. You are mapping the interior terrain that led you to become who you are. If an event mattered to you, it matters on the page. The key is to present it as your experience rather than as an unquestionable fact.

Language helps here. Phrases like “I remember” or “It seemed to me” acknowledge subjectivity without undermining sincerity. They remind the reader that this is a perspective shaped by time. Paradoxically, this humility often increases credibility. Readers understand that memory is fallible. What they respond to is vulnerability.

There is also the question of whether memory fades into irrelevance. If something happened decades ago and no longer affects anyone, does it matter if the details are blurred. In a practical sense, perhaps not. In a human sense, it still matters because it contributed to your formation. We are accumulations of remembered moments. Even distorted memories shape us. If you believed for years that you had failed at something, that belief influenced your choices, regardless of whether the failure was as catastrophic as you recall.

The psychological reality becomes the narrative reality.

We must also confront the uncomfortable truth that memory can be manipulated. Entire groups can reshape collective memory through repetition and omission. 

On a personal level, families sometimes collude in a shared narrative that excludes inconvenient facts. Writing memoir can disrupt that collusion. It can feel like betrayal. Yet silence does not guarantee harmony. It merely preserves a version of events that may not align with your lived experience.

This is where courage enters the equation.

You cannot promise perfect recall. You can promise that you are writing in good faith. You can state openly that dialogue has been reconstructed and certain names changed. You can acknowledge that your memory may differ from others’. This transparency honors the reader. It also frees you from the impossible burden of omniscience.

Some writers worry that admitting fallibility weakens their authority. In truth, it deepens it. The memoirist who pretends to own flawless recall invites suspicion. The one who acknowledges the fragility of memory invites trust.

There is an irony here. Fiction writers are given enormous latitude to invent entire worlds, yet memoirists are expected to defend every comma. And yet fiction, too, is rooted in memory. Novelists draw on emotional experiences, sensory impressions, and psychological truths gathered over a lifetime. The boundary between fiction and memoir is not as stark as we like to imagine. Both rely on the human capacity to remember and reinterpret.

The difference lies in the contract with the reader.

Memoir says, “This happened to me.” Fiction says, “This could have happened.” But in both cases, the writer is engaged in the art of meaning making. The memoirist shapes reality into narrative just as the novelist shapes imagination into plot. Neither operates in a vacuum of pure fact. Both depend on selection, emphasis, and rhythm.

So is it acceptable to fictionalize in memoir?

It depends on what you mean by fictionalize. If you mean inventing dramatic episodes that never occurred in order to enhance market appeal, that undermines the genre. If you mean reconstructing scenes in order to communicate the emotional essence of lived experience, that is inevitable. The ethical line is crossed when the writer deliberately deceives about material facts central to the narrative’s claim. It is not crossed when the writer uses craft to express the truth of feeling.

At some point, the philosophical question becomes almost playful. If memory is a reconstruction, and reconstruction is shaped by present understanding, then every memoir is partly an act of imagination. We are imagining our former selves. We are entering scenes that no longer exist in physical reality. We are recreating voices that have fallen silent. The page becomes a meeting place between past and present selves.

What matters is not whether every detail can be externally verified. What matters is whether the story resonates as authentic. Readers can sense when something rings false. They can also sense when a writer is grappling honestly with uncertainty.

There is a liberating thought hidden in all this. You do not need to remember everything. You do not need to provide an exhaustive inventory of your past. You need to choose the moments that illuminate your journey. Memory is selective by nature. Let your memoir be selective by design. Allow space for ambiguity. Admit when your recollection is hazy. Focus on what you felt, what you believed, and how those beliefs shaped your actions.

In the end, memoir is not about proving that something existed in the external world. It is about exploring how it existed within you.

The events of your life may fade from public consciousness. People move on. Context dissolves. Witnesses forget. But the internal narrative you carry continues to influence your choices and relationships. Writing memoir is an attempt to understand that narrative, to examine it in the light of present awareness, and to decide what it means.

Memory may be unreliable, but it is not meaningless.

It is the raw material from which we build identity. It is imperfect, colored, and occasionally contradictory. Yet without it, we would have no story at all. The task of the memoirist is not to freeze the past in amber. It is to acknowledge that the past is fluid and to write with integrity within that fluidity. If you approach your work with humility, transparency, and a commitment to emotional truth, you will honor both yourself and your reader.

And perhaps that is enough.

Keep Writing

Rob Parnell