Before I Go to Sleep

What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?

We’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.

It's so difficult, isn't it? To see what's going on when you're in the absolute middle of something? It's only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.

I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me.

There are memories I am better off without. Things better lost forever.

I cannot imagine how I will cope when I discover that my life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of collection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?

I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn't feel ashamed.

I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd fought for you. I was weak and stupid.

Do you trust me? The question is usually asked before an admission that such trust is misplaced.

I am an adult, but a damaged one.

I will never abandon you. I love you too much.

With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.

I have no choice but to face whatever my reality has become.

It’s perfectly possible to hold two opposing points of view in the mind at once, oscillating between them.

Thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance.

This is dying everyday. Over and over.

I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, barely brushing them with his lips. I felt safe, at home. I felt as if here, against his body, was the only place in which I belonged. The only place I had ever wanted to be. We lay in silence for a while, holding each other, our skin merging, our breathing synchronized. I felt as if silence might allow the moment to last for ever, which would still not be enough.

Whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof.

…I feel like he’s taking advantage of me. Advantage of my illness. He thinks he can rewrite history in any way that he likes and I will never know, never be any the wiser. But I do know. I know exactly what he’s doing. And so I don’t trust him. In the end he is pushing me away, Dr. Nash. Ruining everything.

I could think of nothing, nothing to say, nothing to feel. My mind was empty.

these truths are all I have. They are my past. They are what makes me human. Without them, I am nothing. Nothing but an animal.

It’s not life, it’s just an existence, jumping from one moment to the next with no idea of the past, and no plan for the future.

There was a letter, tucked among the pictures. It was addressed to Santa Claus and written in blue crayon. The jerky letters danced across the page. He wanted a bike, he said, or a puppy, and promised to be good. It was signed, and he had added his age. Four. I do not know why, but as I read it, my world seemed to collapse. Grief exploded in my chest like a grenade. I had been feeling calm - not happy, not even resigned, but calm - and that serenity vanished, as if vaporized. Beneath it, I was raw.

I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile.

I am sliding, down,down. Toward blackness, I must not sleep. I must not sleep.I.Must.Not.Sleep.

Progress? You call this progress?” I was almost shouting now, anger spilled out of me as if I could no longer contain it. “If that’s what it is, then I don’t know if I want it.” The tears were flooding now, uncontrollable. “I don’t want it!” I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless.