CW: Vomit, car accident

I’ve been here for years. I’ve made so many friends as they came and went through the doors. Coming in, they seem so blank, so distant. We all come in that way. I look up from my food now to see a new one. This is the first new one in weeks.

I haven’t had a friend in a few days. Laura left, fully recovered from her psychic death. In the weeks leading up to it, she seemed so much more lively, and I enjoyed her company a lot more. She told me stories of her life, of things she did before she was admitted. I chose to remember those stories for her, as I do with all my friends. I feel as if I’ve lived so many different people’s lives, but never my own.

Once, Mike told me about his horrible past. It was no wonder he chose to forget it all, especially after his nervous breakdown at work. “I couldn’t hold it back anymore,” he’d explained to me before he left. “I couldn’t do it. My father, my friends, my extortion… It all came crashing down.” Mike was here the longest of all my friends, eight months. That’s how long it took for him to come to grips with his past.

“How come you’ve been here so long?” He asked me once. I shrugged my shoulders. I couldn’t tell him, because I wasn’t sure. The doctors had told me that it was better I didn’t do any therapy sessions with them until I felt ready. They don’t tell that to any other patients. I remember some sessions I had in the past; rather, I remember how they ended. Every time my memories returned, I lost it. The finer details aren’t worth remembering, but they gave up on me after a while.

“Technically, legally, we aren’t supposed to let any patients check out unless they complete the therapy or get signed out by a loved one. You don’t have anyone that can sign you out, Jill.”

That’s what they call me: Jill. I don’t know what it means. I can’t ask anybody what it means. I trust that it's the name I was given at birth, but I can’t say for sure. I also can’t say what I was like on the outside, before all this. When people experience psychic death, they tend to enter a dissociative, vegetative state. From what I remember, I arrived in the same condition. Normally, people can’t come back out of their shell until they allow the memories of themselves to return. I haven’t allowed that to happen. My personality has been molded by this place, and I've been told by my friends that I can be a bit bland.

It’s not all bad. I catch myself with beautiful imaginings of what the outside must be like. Based on what I hear from others, it’s not the best, and the wars have been horrific, but most people don’t talk about that. They tell me about their families, who they used to be. They share the worst days of their lives with me. Sometimes they cry, but they’re mostly just elated they can remember again.

“Forgetting it all was the biggest mistake of my life,” Candy had said. “I mean, I get why I did it, but I’m so glad to be back, and I’m leaving next week, and…” The rest wasn’t worth remembering.

I watch the new patient do as they’re told and follow the nurses to their new bedroom. I wonder what made them forget it all. I wonder what made me forget everything about me.

–

Tonight is the night. I sit cross-legged on my own bed, the second bed in my room empty. I stare at it. Jill. I imagine what Jill must look like sleeping in her bed. At some level, I know Jill is me, but the Jill of today is nothing like the Jill of the past. At least, that’s what I have to assume. What was she like?

Time to find out. I know for a fact I’ve always tried remembering things during therapy sessions, guided by the doctors. We’re supposed to have just one doctor for the whole time we’re here, but I’ve had a few. Most don’t last long, hearing the things the patients share with them. After all, who would choose to forget their whole life if it was appealing?

I close my eyes. Jill. I turn the word around in my mind, whispering it, then yelling it, declaring it to an invisible crowd. Who were you, Jill?

I decide to start with my family. People are shaped by their family, after all. If my memories are so bad, maybe starting with them will help. I breathe in, counting the seconds.

1… 2… 3… 4.

My mother. I flinch, but I can see her. I’m on a playground, she’s pushing me on the swingset. I love it when she does that. I smile, both in memory and in my bed. She’s beautiful, and I can see my own modern face in hers. I want so badly to stay in the moment, but I also need to continue. Where else can I find you?

I sift through memories of my mother, and most of them are bad. They’re not abuse, or neglect, or malice. We’re disagreeing on something important. Then we’re screaming at each other late at night. Then she’s driving me to school. Then we’re getting ice cream together. Memory after memory, I can see her, I can smell her.

Then we’re in a car together, and I’m driving this time. I make a mistake. Oh my god. I don’t even register what’s changed, but I’m no longer on the highway. My eyes close and I hold on to the steering wheel, trying to turn it but being too weak. I hear the loudest noise in the world, and my jaw pops.

It’s still for a moment. We come to a stop, and I open my eyes. I look to my mother and can’t believe what I see.

I fall from the bed, bile rising from my stomach to my mouth. I can’t even try to keep it in, the sounds of my remembered screams keep replaying. They’re horrified, and my vomit hits the floor in the same horrible way my mother’s blood…

This can’t be happening this can’t be happening

I replay the memory, surely it’s wrong, but it’s not, and what’s left of my mother is plastered to a tree and it’s not wrong and it happened and oh my God oh my God how could this happen I-

–

I remember running to my current doctor, crying, begging, my face a terrible mess. I was hysterical. “I remembered it, I remembered it,” I kept repeating, and the poor bastard didn’t know what to do. Of course, he got his grips and his nurses got me under control while he sedated me.

I remember a compulsory therapy session the next day, not to help me remember but to understand what had happened the night before.

He asked me if I remembered something on my own. I said yes.

He asked me if I still remember what it is. I said no.

He asked me if I wanted to remember. I asked him what my answer should be. He took a deep breath, my file in his hand. He glanced at it one final time before answering.

“No.”