The Day I Lost ... The Day I Won

The Day I Lost

It’s Saturday today. It’s been two days, and I still can’t remember how I got here.

I know I’m home. It looks a bit different, but I know it’s the house I grew up in. But everything else is changed. I woke up two days ago feeling that a great chunk of time was lost. I’ve been looking for it hard, I swear, but I can’t find it. I can’t remember the last thing I remember. I feel like I’m losing my mind.

I still remember my name. My full name. That’s a good thing, right? It has to be. There has to be something good here. I remember my little brother. I remember my dad. I remember our house. But I don’t know how much time has passed since those memories of them. I really can’t tell. I mean, when I woke up two days ago, dazed and confused, I looked in the mirror. Maybe I would find answers. I thought my reflection would tell me something, anything. Instead, it just scared me. I reminded myself to breathe as I stared back at a man with a beard, a man whose burdened eyes looked like they’d lived thirty years of suffering.

But I’m not thirty years old. I couldn’t remember how old I was, but I asked a few friends—or at least people that evidence says are friends—and they all said I was twenty-four.

When did I grow a beard? When in the world did I ever think it was a good idea?

And my glasses. They fit me, they look good, but I can’t bear them. I can’t bear them on my face. I want to take them off and throw them at the nearest wall and watch them shatter. They’re so painful, like my eyesight has changed in my sleep, in my coma. They say I stayed asleep for five days. My brother says he saw me awake a few times during that time, but I don’t know what to believe anymore. I don’t feel like I’ve woken up in a very long time; it feels like I slept a hundred years.

The world looks different. My phone looks different. The streets look different. Hell, even my brother himself looked different when I set my eyes on him! I remembered him to be much, much younger. Now he’s all grown up. He’d just come back from work. My baby brother goes to work now. When did all this happen? Where was I when it happened? What else did I miss? Do I have a child somewhere that I forgot about?

I’m scared. I hate to admit it, even to myself, but I’m scared and shaken and lonely. People say they know me, but how can they know me when I don’t even know myself? How can they claim to know what’s good for me?

God, what happened to me?

A man passed by who claimed to be a friend. I saw genuine care in his eyes when I told him I couldn’t remember anything that happened. He took me to a coffee shop and lent me his laptop. Before I left the house, I’d grabbed a piece of paper on which I’d scrabbled a few of my passwords, back when I'd been myself. I’d planned for a similar scenario. People tell me it’s not the first time this has happened to me. Now I can’t wait to get out of it the way I got out of the rest of my memory-lapse episodes.

I opened the laptop and used the coffee shop’s Wi-Fi to text a few people—and do not even get me started on Wi-Fi! When on earth did that invention come to existence? How could we live without it before? I replied to whichever texts I found. If those people texted me, they must be friends. I read the latest parts of each conversation with each person to have an idea of what the nature of our relationship must have been like. I replied to many people. And suddenly they were all replying back.

I’m more scared. Is it safe to tell them what happened to me? Would any of them use it against me? Can someone feed me wrong information about my past? Can someone use my condition for selfish reasons?

But no, no, they seem like good people. But I have to be careful. They may know me, but I don’t know them. I need to be careful.

They’re feeling sorry. I don’t need them to feel sorry; I need someone to tell me what the hell is happening to me! Where is my family? What happened the last few years? Who are these people I’m talking to?

I start connecting the dots. There are just too many dots, but I do my best. I listen to what each one has to say about my past life. I feel the headache threaten to break my skull. They’re talking about someone else; they must be. I did all this? It doesn’t even sound like me.

Gosh, this is too much information to handle.

I need a breather. I need to go home. I need to find out how to unlock my phone. I need answers … now.

Friends start to come to my house. At least, they seem to be friends. I try to be nice and friendly, hiding my pain and my panic with sarcasm the way I’ve done my whole life. I try to keep people updated with my condition, the people I could sense were really scared for me. I appreciate these friends trying to help, but I need to be alone. I can’t take this. I need to be alone with myself, whichever self it happens to be.

As I listen to all the things I did in my life, I wonder if I will ever recall doing them. It sounds like I did a lot of things, good and bad. Will I ever remember that? Will my memories ever return?

And if this has happened to me before, how did I snap out of it? How did I come back to the real me?

Who’s the real me in the first place? He sounds like a guy I don’t know. Sure, he sounds like he didn’t waste any time, but he’s made such weird decisions. How did he even use to think? I don’t know him. What must have happened to me to turn me into that person?

I feel like a stranger in my own body. I feel like my own mind has sided against me, like it’s trying to punish me for a mistake I’ve made. But this is too harsh a punishment; I don’t know who I am. Can it get any worse?

I’m scared. I want to sit alone in the dark, shut out all contact with the world. The world scares me. Walking in the street and seeing people I don’t know waving to me like we’re lifelong friends scares me. Having people say they want to hang out with me when I don’t even know their names scares me. Having people who care so much about me scares me. Why do they care? What did I ever do to have such friends, friends who care about me so deeply? Well, I must have done something right.

I want this to end.

The Day I Won

It’s Sunday. It’s been three days. But things are finally starting to get better.

I still don’t remember anything, but the headache is better now. I can breathe without feeling like my chest is about to fall off. I feel like I have just enough strength to face the world a little bit.

I’m starting to accept the idea that I’m two different people, and they’re both me. I’m collecting all the bits and pieces people are saying about me and I’m trying to paint a picture of the person I was. He’s still a stranger, but one thing is making me feel safe: some things are still the same.

My favorite color is different now. I add more sugar in my tea than they say I used to. I feel weird about people who seem to be really, really nice. But I still use humor as a shield. I still come up with plans to face worse scenarios. I still hate the same types of food. I still don’t like reading. I still can’t express myself using words.

I’m me. I understand now that “me” is a very relative thing. I’m a different “me” to each person. It’s practically impossible to go back to my lost self without my memories because he’s just not me. But he sounds like a good guy. Friends are telling me he was doing the best he could. They’re telling me the stupid mistakes he made, and they sound like something I would do, yes. I almost feel like I want to meet him. I’m curious to know what he was like, that twin brother of mine, the version of me that has left without a word. I want to see him, explore him, figure him out.

Why did he make those choices for me, for us? What was he thinking? What was he feeling? What kind of pressure did he have to bear? What hardships shaped him into that unreachable specter?

But one choice he made right was the people in his life. I know he was trustworthy just because I can see what sort of people he chose to keep close to him in the latest years of his life. They’re so supportive, so understanding. They only want my welfare. They want to help me understand. They want to help me go back. They care for me the way I never thought people could. They make me laugh and visit me every day. They text me all day long to make sure I ate and took my medicine. They do silly things to make me forget my misery.

If I ever get my memories back, I don’t want to lose the ones I’m living now. I want to remember. I want to remember the ways they were there for me during my hardship. I want to appreciate them the way they deserve.

But words always fail me. I was never good with words. I try to express, but I end up throwing in a joke. Sarcasm is my only defense. It’s the only way I know. It runs in the family. I just hope they understand how I really feel through the layer of humor I add to mask my vulnerability. I hope they don’t get fooled by my act.

And I hope I get to remember all the things I’m sure they did for me before, back when I was the person they knew. I’m sure this is not the first time they’ve held my back. I’m sure I got to whatever good place I was thanks to them.

I know one thing: despite everything that’s threatening to cost me my sanity, I know I’m one lucky man.

August 11th, 2019

The background story:

I wrote this the day after I found out my friend lost his memory. (I wrote about this incident in the previous post, The Day My Friend Met Me Again for the First Time.) We were talking, and he told me he wished he could express how he felt, but words had never been his strongest suit. I decided to make him a surprise. I put myself in his shoes and I wrote as if I were him. I recalled all the little details he’d mentioned to me concerning the whole incident, and I put them into this piece of writing. When I showed it to him, he told me it delivered how he felt perfectly. 

This is how a person feels when they wake up barely knowing who they are.

I asked my friend's permission to publish his story, and he agreed. I think it's good to be able to share how someone can survive something so tough. And as the days go by and as he overcomes this, I will be here, writing.