The usage here implies that the action is habitual, not continuous, nor final, e.g. "Every time I tell the story, I forget the name". She could have said "I have forgotten", but that implies a finality the writer wants to exclude. If her habitual forgetting was confined to the past, she might have written "I used to forget...".

I think everything you've said is correct; I just wanted to add the idea of an habitual aspect.

EDIT: found a reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_markers_of_habitual_as...