“I Think It Happened… But I’m Not Sure”: When Memory Becomes a Question

I just finished watching the first episode of Unbelievable, a series that follows the complex path of a young woman who reports a rape and later begins to question whether it happened at all, and honestly, it left me feeling heavier than I expected. There’s a scene where the girl, after hours of questioning, says, "Maybe it was a dream. I must have made it up." That line hasn’t left me. It wasn’t unsettling because I thought she was lying, rather it was unsettling because I could feel that kind of doubt sinking into her, the kind you don’t invite but that just shows up when you’re tired and scared and alone.

I’ve always been fascinated by memory, how it holds us up, how it betrays us. And watching that moment made me think about how breakable our memories can be, especially when they carry the weight of something awful.
We like to imagine memories as this solid thing, like a backup drive we can count on, but in reality, they’re more like sketches: messy, smudged, and always being redrawn.

It reminded me of Jennifer Thompson’s story, one I read about sometime ago in a Forensics Psychology class but never really forgot. Back in 1984, Jennifer was assaulted, and during the attack, she did everything a smart victim would do. She memorized his face, every feature she could. Later, in the lineup, she pointed to Ronald Cotton without hesitation. She was sure. Her voice didn’t shake. Her heart knew it was him. Except it wasn’t. Years later, DNA evidence proved Ronald’s innocence. Jennifer’s memory, vivid and heartfelt and convincing, had been wrong.

And that’s the terrifying part, isn’t it? That we can remember something with all our heart, and still not have it right. Episodic memories, the ones tied to a particular place and moment, feel like photographs, but they’re more like paintings that get touched up every time we look at them. And the more emotional the event, the stronger the colors might seem, but that doesn’t mean the picture’s more accurate.

False memories don’t happen because people are lying. They happen because when something terrible happens, and someone asks us again and again what we saw, what we heard, what we felt. Our brain tries to give answers, even if those answers bend a little without us realizing it. 

In Jennifer’s case, it wasn’t just the trauma; it was the system around her, reinforcing, validating, repeating the same idea until her mind sealed it up like a fact. Confidence doesn’t always mean correctness. And when a false memory gets rehearsed enough, it can feel even sharper and clearer than a real one.

Sometimes the mind doesn’t just distort memories, it builds them from scratch. Beth Rutherford, who in the 90s went into therapy looking for help, came out with memories of the worst things imaginable. Memories of being raped by her father, pregnancies, forced abortions. Memories that tore her family apart. Memories that, later, turned out to be false. Planted, unintentionally but devastatingly, by the very therapy that was supposed to heal her. Beth wasn’t lying. She believed it with everything she had. And that’s what makes these stories so heartbreaking.

Watching Unbelievable made something very clear to me. When someone starts doubting their own memory, it doesn’t mean they weren’t hurt. It just means they’re human. Our brains are wired for survival, not for perfect record-keeping. And when trauma, authority, and fear collide, even the clearest memory can get smudged around the edges.

I’m going to keep watching the show. But now, I’m watching it with a little more understanding about what it means to live with a mind that’s trying its best to protect you, even when it sometimes gets the details wrong. Believing someone doesn't mean expecting their story to be picture-perfect. It means recognizing that pain is real, even when memory struggles to carry it properly.