Life Or Something Like It
an excerpt

Life's a mystery. Your born knowing nothing, knowing nobody, not even your own self. You're thrust, without a choice, into the world of honesty and deceit, and of pleasure and pain. The decision is not yours to make, but you must deal with it. You must learn to adapt to the life in which you've been given. And at first, that can seem terrifying. How is one supposed to function, when they know nothing of the ways of the world?

But as you grow older, you find yourself associated with countless people, some you like and some you don't, but it's one of those things you just learn to deal with it. By the time you are old enough to make your own decisions, your brain has been crammed with whatever society has told you is morally right or wrong, acceptable or unacceptable. Throw in your own opinions on the things they tell you, and you've really just got a jumbled up mess of uncertainty and mislead opinions.

But no matter what happens, there's always one thing that you can fall back on, one thing that keeps you sane. You know yourself. Even when your whole life seems to be on rocky ground, when you find yourself surrounded by secrets and lies, you know that you have control of yourself, and you can trust your own instinct. In fact, by the time you come to realize that the world isn't all good, you'll know yourself so well, you`ll probably be your own worst enemy. There won't be a side of yourself that you haven't had to face. You`ll know your strengths, your weaknesses, fears, opinions, and all that makes you who you are on the inside, and to everyone around you.

So what exactly happens in that period of time between life and death, however long that may be, that makes us so knowledegable, so different from where we started? Really, it could be described in many words. Memories. Pain. Truth. Loss. Gain. Love. Tears. In short, life. Your experiences, no matter how small or insignificant they may seem at the time, make you who you are. They happen and, almost subconciously, you react to them. Whether its through bitter sadness, mixed with tears and comforting hugs from those close to you, or whether it be through smiles, walking hand in hand with happiness and celebration; it happens. Life is filled with varying amounts of both reactions, but eventually, as time passes, each individual incident settles into the role of a memory, set in stone forever. It's happened, and there's no changing it. Memories. As I said, they make us who we are.

But what if you don't have all of that? What happens when you wake up one day and realize that you know nothing about the world around you and that you know nobody that claims to know you? What if you didn't remember any of those 'experiences' or 'reactions'? Just imagine if one day, you woke up, and you didn't know what you liked, what you hated, what you feared, what your goals for the future were, or basically anything about yourself. What if you didn't know who you were? How horrible it is, to wake up and find that your mind is a blank, a whiteboard with nothing written on it. It's like the answers to all of your questions have been written across the board already, over time, and everyone can see them but you. Everyone seems to know what you don't, which is everything about your life. You feel like you're completely lost in your own soul. People are constantly telling you things, and you can only assume that they are true, because if you don't, you've got nothing. And uncertainty is better than nothing, in the end.

Well that's my life. Okay, not exactly, but close enough. I haven't lost all recognition of myself. The whiteboard isn't completely blank. It's sort of like the answers have been written there, but someone has let an eraser glide through the contents, leaving gaps everywhere. And you've got nothing to do but wait for them to fill themselves back in, because you have no idea how to do it yourself.

Maybe I should backtrack; maybe I should explain how I ended up in the jumbled state of mind I'm in today, as I write this.

A week ago, I woke up in a strange room. I'd never seen it before, but I knew that it wasn't mine. It was plain. Light blue walls, plain white sheets, and big beeping machines everywhere. There were five people around me. Two of them, I knew, though they had certainly changed, but the other three I didn't recognize at all. They were complete and total strangers to me. Who were they? My family. The ones I knew, and the ones I didn't. It was sad really, to look at your own brothers and your own father, and not have a clue who they are. Well technically, it was my stepfather and stepbrothers, but they're still my family... I guess. It made me feel like a terrible person not to recognize them. They tell me that they've been around for almost two years, but how was I supposed to know that? The accident wiped out nearly four years of my memory. My own, biological sister looked different to me. Recognizeable, yes, but she was definitely different. The girl that I remembered was a cute, little six year old girl in short, brown pigtails, hiding shyly behind me wherever we went. But she's changed, now. She's grown over a foot and a half to my memory. Her usual darker, curly hair, once pulled back into pigtails, was now a lighter, straightened style. She seems more outgoing, to me. Whether that changed over the years, or recently, I wouldn't be able to say. I guess everyone changes over time. She's ten now, they tell me.

My mother was more recognizeable to me, though she too, had changed. It's just a lot harder to forget the face of your own mother. Her hair was longer and lighter than it had been before, and her face was... not exactly older, but aged from my memory. But her personality hadn't changed one bit, and I found a sense of security in that.

The vague physical differences in my mother and sister still catch me everytime, but I really shouldn't be complaining, I guess. At least I remembered them as much as I did. The accident, at least, had allowed me to keep that much of my history with me.

The accident happened about five weeks ago, they say. Apparantly, I'd taken the car and left the house at around nine thirty at night. I wasn't supposed to be driving, but I'd gone anyway. My mother tells me that I'd gotten into a fight with my boyfriend, although I guess it was ex-boyfriend after that. The last person that I'd talked to before I'd left was my stepbrother, and he said that- upon questioning my obvious bad mood, I'd flipped out, telling him to mind his own business, and left crying. I guess I'd still been pretty upset, or mad, or both, because I completely ignored the lights switching from green to red, and had sped right through the intersection, ramming right into an oncoming car. I wasn't even supposed to be driving, really. I didn't have a lisence yet, just a permit. I guess I made a lot of mistakes that day. There are so many things that I wish I'd done differently now, but I don't even have the memories to scold myself over, just the knowledge that it happened.

The coma had lasted almost exactly a month. The first few days had been a struggle in which I'd hovered somewhere between life and death, fighting an epic battle for my life. I don't know all the details. I didn't ask for them, but phrases like 'dangerously low oxygen levels', 'extensive memory loss', and 'severe blood loss', keep creeping up whenever anyone speaks of those first few days. I don't really want to know the rest, don't want to know how close I came to death that night. Life support had been my whole exsistance for a little while, apparantly. Without it, I wouldn't have made it past the first night. But I did, and I`m here today. I should be grateful and thankful, I guess. And I am. Really, I am. I just can't help but feel as if I've missed out on a big chunk of my life. And really, I did. Or rather, it was snatched from my hands. I guess I let it go really, by making all those stupid makes. Thats my punishment, I guess, for doing something that I wasn't supposed to be doing.

I`m writing this recollection of events because they've told me to. The doctors, that is. They say that it will help to focus my mind, to reflect. They say my memory will come back eventually. 'If' isn't the issue here. It's going to happen, they've already assured me of that. But the question still remains, when? It could take weeks, months, even years. There's no possible way of knowing that until it starts to happen. I just want it all back. My memories, my experiences, my life. I want people to stop tiptoeing around me, treating me like some fragile, delicate doll thats going to break at any second. I`m not going to break; I`m perfectly fine. The whole 'Alex is delicate' facade is a little more than annoying at this point. I`m sure they all mean well; In fact, I know they do. But it's all a little bit overwhelming. It's hard enough having to try and get my whole life back, but that's even harder to do when I can tell that nobody is treating me like me. Then again, I can't really tell the difference, as I don't exactly know who 'me' is anymore. But I`ll find out. I know I will. I have to.

Until next time,

Alexandra (Alex) Stacey