For most, it would be hard to imagine remembering every detail of their lives, but for Rebecca Sharrock, it’s reality.
Ms Sharrock, a born and bred Logan local, is one of 80 known people worldwide living with Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM).
HSAM is a condition that enables Ms Sharrock to remember, almost perfectly, every moment of her life.
Ms Sharrock can explain with intricate detail what happened on any given day.
She said the condition came with a few positive qualities, but it was not the “superpower” people think it is.
“I get to remember and re-live the happiest moments from my past, and the topic of HSAM is a quirky thing to talk about with people I meet,” Ms Sharrock said.
She said her ability to rely on memory had helped her in other areas, such as managing obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which often accompanies HSAM.
Unfortunately, HSAM is also often accompanied by conditions like insomnia.
“It causes insomnia due to a person’s mind being constantly active with distracting flashbacks,” Ms Sharrock said.
She is soothed by classical music to enable sleep.
“That gives my mind something calming to focus on, and therefore it prevents the flashbacks.”
Ms Sharrock said her flashbacks weren’t always positive.
“Whenever my mind involuntarily re-lives a negative experience from my past, it brings along anxiety which is very difficult to explain to people,” she said.
According to Ms Sharrock, she always exhibited qualities of HSAM but wasn’t diagnosed until her early 20s.
“I did sense that there was something unusual about my inability to let go of past events,” she said.
Her parents learned of the condition in 2011 because of a documentary, and two years later, following a series of “thorough tests”, Ms Sharrock was finally diagnosed.
Another decade later and Ms Sharrock is awaiting the Logan screening of a new documentary on her family’s life.
The documentary, ‘Because We Have Each Other’, tells the story of her family’s neurodiversity (every member lives with a disability, including autism and dyslexia), along with having too many pets and too many bills to pay.
Recently, Ms Sharrock and some of her family visited the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto, Canada, for a screening of the film.
Ms Sharrock said she was excited to share her story with Logan because of the many local families similar to hers.
“From our own experience we know that parents of children with disabilities are less able to work full time, because they have to care for their children with extra support needs,” she said.
“A lot of their money also has to get spent on medical costs which aren’t bulk billed.
“Therefore, due to financial limitations families like us often have no choice but to buy and live in a city like Logan.”
Now the documentary has finished filmed, Ms Sharrock said her next step was publishing her book.
“The next major project for me is the book, which will be a chronological memoir of my experiences from birth to my thirtieth birthday,” she said.
“The manuscript is now completed, and I’ve entered it into a competition to get it edited and published.”
The screening of ‘Because We Have Each Other’ is on Saturday 13 May in the Butterbox Theatre in the Kingston Butter Factory Cultural Precinct.
