By: Toshita Pandey
Every morning, I wake up to a new life that doesn’t belong to me. The past has disappeared. What’s left is my bare survival that’s difficult to deal with.
Content warning: memory loss
Have you ever been on a roller coaster ride? You’re a mere spectator as the wind and gravity play as you gradually move up and abruptly come down. My life feels that way these days. Every morning, I wake up to a new life that doesn’t belong to me. The past has disappeared. What’s left is my bare survival that’s difficult to deal with. I can’t recall conversations with people from weeks ago.
Doctors say my mind prioritizes ruthlessly and keeps only what is required. How do I tell my mind that these small conversations are also important for my social life? The other day I couldn’t remember that a co-worker had visited my place in the past. Days and even an entire week go missing from my memory. I am not exaggerating. Perhaps the mood stabilizers and other strong medications caused this.
Now that I have stopped taking medication, I wonder when things will get back to normal. What is normal? I don’t recall conversations. I don’t recall names. I barely remember faces. My professional life is hanging by a thread. My only solution is documenting every hour.
I created a journal, which is more like an instruction manual containing only hourly highlights. Each day has a maximum of 24 bullet points. How long can I last? I can’t always reference my journal when someone comes to me with shared memories. Can I?
How do you move past every moment with a blank mind? What about some lingering aspirations?
I have always dreamt of the stars — big dreams that could land in the good pages of history. There are three ambitions I am always working on to achieve.
First, it’s becoming a better software engineer. I crave learning new things and finding better ways to solve problems at work. But how do I do that when what I learn everyday vanishes the next? It feels like I’m stuck on an island with nowhere to go.
I want to get more involved in start-ups. I dream of having my own organisation. But every idea I come up with and implement vanishes. Before I know it, the links between my feature list and implementation are broken. I can’t even retrace my thought process.
Lastly, I have somehow found great love in words. Whenever I read a good article, poetry, or listen to meaningful lyrics, I feel like the words are dissolving into my heart. I feel every bit of it. I love words so much that I prefer text conversations with people than verbal ones. I enjoy writing too. But I have forgotten books I’ve read and poems I’ve written. Sometimes I even admire writing that I don’t remember is mine.
These uninvited issues affect my life in the most unpredictable ways. In order to cope, I sleep with the thought that maybe when I wake up, I’ll remember things again. The last time I could remember consistently was seven years ago. Maybe I’ll remember a story to share when hanging out with friends. Maybe my parents will be a tad bit less worried about me. Who knows if things will ever improve?
