Amnesia, the sort I got from PTSD, has a sort of cerebral buzz when thoughts try to access whatever is blocked. Some parts of my head are doors forever locked. In time it feels as if they are being removed or shrunk, so that in time the doors themselves will be the last thing to vanish. Wounds are that way though, aren't they? When we damage the skin it heals from below and the scab falls off once the new skin is perfect. It's that, or at least I believe it is that, there is an emotional wound and the amnesia block is the scab.
The amnesia is a roadblock of sorts, or perhaps a screen that reaches from ground to sky, because I have a sense of it. So I am aware when I am forgetting, when there is something close yet hidden, yet I cannot in that moment fathom what it could be. It's as if I was following a bread crumb trail and it ends, so I stop. So that gives me some ideas as to what is missing from my brain, because if one always got stopped when travelling south, you would know that the blocks are to the south, even if you have no clue as to what they are.
My clothes aren't right and I don't know this room. It looks like a hospital, a nice one. There are flowers, clean sheets and soft music playing. As I go to leave the bed an alarm sounds and in comes a nurse.
"Angeline, there you are. Remember me? Nurse Nicola?" I shake my head. She isn't the least bit familiar. Her smile falters a little. "You need the washroom? Come now."
I shake my arm. "Get off. I don't know you. Don't touch me. I'm leaving." She isn't surprised. Quite the contrary. She wears an expression that says she's heard all this before and a level of confidence that suggests she knows what to do and say next.
The amnesia Emma had wasn't cute or romantic like in the movies. She couldn't recall many words, or how to read. She was scared of people who loved her, unable to deal with the intensity of their emotions. Most of the time she felt lost with not a single place feeling like home, not a voice to cradle her mind in familiar sounds, or a set of warm hands she would let hold her own.
Susan stares at the handsome visitor, so good of him to come to see her so often. Today he has photographs, pictures of a young woman and man years ago, wedding pictures, babies, children. As the glossy images pass through her fingers he glances at her, anxious for recognition that never comes. She likes him, wants to please him, so she says "Thank-you so much, I enjoyed those. It's so good of your wife to let you see me so often. Such nice pictures. You said you're married?" At that the man cries, face buckled like a toddler lost in a crowd.
Tia walks into the house, her parents right behind with her hospital bag and flowers. Her face smiles at her from the walls, apparently the eldest child of these two middle aged people. There are trophies for athletics and a small poodle who greets her with enthusiasm. From the kitchen comes an old woman, one who visited her in the hospital many times, "Here comes my favourite granddaughter!"