Thanks for sharing, @Mary_M . My heart goes out to you. 
I am pretty sure you know that there are a lot of great qualities that you have, and you display them in your life. Remember those qualities and stand tall in them. With lot of the other things you display which you don’t like, could be a result of abuse and mistreatment. It is good to remind yourself that ‘this is not who I am. This is just how I am showing up at the moment because of mistreatment.’ It takes time, but these things can be changed.
Some things I have learned…
You need to be your own best friend. Good best friends don’t tear their friend down. Good best friends give their friend the space they need when they are having a hard day. Good best friends understand that you are human, and with that comes making mistakes and forgetting things; they appreciate the differences and quirkiness in you, that makes you who you are. You need to be that for yourself. 
It is good to remember that if you don’t respect yourself, then there are others who see that, and think you are not worthy of respect, so they don’t respect you either. The truth is… you are worthy of respect! Your life has the same legitimacy to live here on earth as others, and you are as precious and valuable as every other person you know. These horrible messages you received from your childhood which contradict this, are lies. It is worth standing in these truths and protecting yourself. You are worth it. You don’t have to stay imprisoned in this disrespect cycle.
If you don’t protect yourself with boundaries, and stand up for yourself; stand up for justice (in the correct manner, of course), your body, in turn, will put its protective mechanisms in place. Are you doing too much for others? Your body will fatigue you, or fill your body with pain or cause pain in the weak points in your body. This will slow you down. But instead of having a restful time in that, you end up having a painful and frustrating time, because you left it to your brain to protect you. Your mind (your thinking) needs to take control by making right, protective choices which are followed through by the protective behaviours necessary for self-preservation. It is not selfishness. It is doing the right thing by you. Each person is responsible to protect themselves, and when we find that we can’t do it all alone, and/or others can’t do it alone, we help each other out.
A slightly different lesson, but similar, is…If you don’t look after yourself, no-one else will.
Boundaries are “loving others without losing the best of who you are.” Lysa Terkeurst. An example to display the opposite is…when we overextend ourselves, when helping others, we can become irritable and frustrated. We think we are hiding it well, but most the time we are not. Others can then internalize our responses, thinking that they are an irritation. Our help then becomes less loving than we hoped it would be, because we are not acting out of the best of ourselves.
And one more…We can’t give what we don’t have.
As I type all these up, I am “preaching to myself.” I still have my L plates on in all this. I hope something out of this helps you.
About your memory… if you have always had struggles, it could be your brain’s protective mechanism, as a result of abuse and trauma, to help you cope. I strongly believe this happened to me. I mostly remember what I essentially need to know for my day to day living. I have struggled for as long as I can remember, and am embarrassed about repeating conversations to the same person over and over, without realizing at the time. I have a lot of gaps in my knowledge for my age and feel very inadequate. We need to be patient with ourselves, and if others have a problem with our disability, that is their problem. We are doing the best we can with what we have.
Hang in there @Mary_M ! And remember that you are precious.
