I'm absolutely garbage with directions &amp; spacial orientation &amp; navigation. I never have any idea where I'm going; I always fuck up at navigating; you can take me somewhere ten times and I'll still get lost the first time I try to get there on my own. I also have severe memory loss issues that I've always attributed to trauma and repression. If there's any kind of significant emotional stimulus associated with an event, it's like I'll black it out. It just doesn't exist in my brain. This has caused enormous angst in romantic relationships because I just won't remember things that are important to my partner -- a beautiful experience we shared together, or a hurtful thing I'd done. It just doesn't exist in my brain.

Here's some research suggesting that bipolar disorder is a degenerative disease that causes progressive brain damage over time through the reduction of gray matter in different parts of the brain.... ESPECIALLY in areas corresponding to emotional regulation, impulse control, planning, memory (especially of events/emotions/spacial orientation), attention/concentration, and navigation/spacial orientation. there's a direct correlation between number &amp; severity of episodes and volume loss of gray matter.

RESEARCH: https://www.cureus.com/articles/42568-neuroplasticity-improves-bipolar-disorder-a-review

I experienced really early symptom onset (11 or 12 years old) and was first diagnosed at 14 or 15. Lithium worked wonders when I was on it, but I was on and off it with severe substance abuse issues, in &amp; out of pysch wards and rehabs for most of my teens. I didn't get bipolar under control until I was probably 23 or 24. In short, bipolar disorder really wreaked havoc on my brain for like a decade before I got reins on it.

tl;dr: I think bipolar disorder brain damage might be the reason I'm so terrible at spacial awareness &amp; have severe &amp; very specific memory loss issues