The fog isn't absence. It's protection. The brain filed those years somewhere the rest of you couldn't afford to go while you still had to show up to school, to life, to everything that couldn't wait. And what you're describing isn't recovery in the tidy sense. It's more like a landscape after a long drought finally getting rain. Things come back in their own order. Your questions at the end are the right ones. The body kept the receipts even when the mind couldn't read them.
The fog isn't absence. It's protection. The brain filed those years somewhere the rest of you couldn't afford to go while you still had to show up to school, to life, to everything that couldn't wait. And what you're describing isn't recovery in the tidy sense. It's more like a landscape after a long drought finally getting rain. Things come back in their own order. Your questions at the end are the right ones. The body kept the receipts even when the mind couldn't read them.
Thank you Alexandra, you were so correct, the memories slowly came into view when I was safe enough to see them🫶🏻❤️🩹