Cover Photo: This photograph shows three glasses of water sitting on a table. The background behind them is a delicate cream. In each cup, red ink is swirling. The cup on the left has the least amount of ink and the cup on the right has the most, so it seems as if they are telling a story that's becoming more intense over time.
Photograph by Choazzy Lin/Unsplash

Did I Get My Memoir Wrong?

I was confident in my narrative and wrote a memoir about it. But turns out the facts were questionable.

The Red Zone: A Love Storypremenstrual dysphoric disorder

knowing

Sleepwalk with Me

‘Perhapsing’: The Use of Speculation in Creative Nonfiction

Write What You Don’t Know

did

The Red Zone

perhapsing

a new paper was released

talking

Did

from her book of the same name

I am not the young writer with the impressive memory anymore. Maybe I never was.

So how do we reconcile with our faulty, malleable memories? We continue telling our stories, shaping narratives, while also holding space that memory is out of our control. The stronger you are convinced you are right about something, the more I’d encourage you to question it.

Chloe Caldwell is the author of The Red Zone: A Love Story, the critically acclaimed  novella WOMEN and essay collections I'll Tell You in Person and Legs Get Led Astray. Her essays have been published in The New York Times, Bon Appétit, The Cut,  Longreads, NylonBuzzfeed, and more. She lives in Hudson, NY.