I don’t know if it’s real

I have a memory but I don’t know if it’s an actual memory or if it is just something my brain made up to have a story to tell or process the current trauma I was going through at the time.

I had a rough period in my life when I was about 14, and I think this is around the time I remembered (or imagined I guess) the even that may or may not have occurred.

In the event, I’ll spare the details, but I was a child, and the event itself was not some horrible terrible thing, but it was not good and during it I was scared.

The actual “memory” (if I didn’t make it up) is hazy, and the only real reason I have to think that I didn’t make it up is that there was one sense (touch of a texture) that I remember so vividly that it feels like a real memory. And while there was somebody else who was present that I could ask for verification of this event, I’m too scared to ask.

I guess another reason I have to believe that it is real is that the fact that this could be fake and I cannot trust myself to know if this happened or not has been bothering me since I remembered(?) it, and I am 21 now.

Just today I was listening to a podcast, one that I should have heeded the trigger warning to, and for the entire podcast I spent it shaking and only able to control my breathing and nerves if I actively focused on forcing myself to stay calm. And I genuinely didn’t have a real reason to be triggered like that. So it got me thinking if maybe something did happen, that my body remembers, but my brain doesn’t. And if so, how likely that would be to be the case.

(side note: I know that everybody is told to and trained to believe in a potential victim’s story. But in this case, if it seems unlikely, I want to know because I just want to let this go and not be thinking about it for another 5 years)