driving a crappy old blue Honda Accord, which I guess is all I can afford on a teacherâs salary. I wish I had my motorcycle back already. It would be more fun, especially in the summer.
I try to keep busy, and to stay awake as long as possible, because every time I fall asleep, thereâs the dream. It doesnât matter if I sleep on the couch, the bed, the carpet. Every time, I wake up on my hands and knees, sweating like Iâve run a marathon, struggling for breath. Itâs gotten so that Iâm afraid to close my eyes. As soon as I do, the mountain looms in front of me, massive, covered in ice and snow. No matter how hard I try to wake up, no matter how hard I try to tell myself I am dreaming, the scenario plays out: the climb, the fall, the lack of air, the images rolling one after the other, the lines of poetryâwhich Iâve looked up online. Marvell, like I thought. The weird thing is, I donât know any of the other lines of the poem, and I donât know anything about Andrew Marvell. And given that my knowledge of popular culture, of books and politicsâof anything that doesnât have to do with my personal lifeâhas survived the accident intact, this strikes me as peculiar.
As if all of this werenât bad enough, whatever personality Iâve managed to maintain is, at least according to Grace and my friends, a little bit off. It started with the cigarettesâAmerican Spirits are my brand, there was never any doubt in my mindâand has spread to other things, like the type of music I listen to, what Iâm good at, and even what I like to eat. Dr. Perry has told me that this can happen after traumatic head injuries, that it will fade with time. Which is all well and good, but it doesnât change the way Grace looks at me when I pull a bottle of Gatorade from the refrigerator or tell her I canât stand tuna fish, or the way Taylor scrutinized me when I sketched an impromptu, accurate rendering of Nevada catching a ball in midairâlike Iâm a pod person from the planet Amnesia.
Iâve started to feel like maybe thereâs another person inside of me, dreaming that awful dream and missing the woman and the little boy. Itâs crazy, I know. I have the oddest feeling that on top of losing my sense of self, Iâve become a stranger who smokes American Spirits and climbs mountains and draws pictures and knows Marvell. Which is impossible, of course. And delusional. And just plain creepy.
The end result of all of this is that my self-confidence is shot to hell. I still canât remember anything, which is, of course, disastrous in and of itself. Then the things that I do remember arenât real, and half the time I eat something, drink something, do something, or say something, I get the pod person treatment. Obviously, Iâm not sleeping well. This canât go on, Iâm sure of it. Somethingâs got to give.
Iâve tried to convey some of this to the psychiatrist Dr. Perry recommended, with dubious results. I donât dislike Dr. Green. He isnât a bad guy, but he doesnât really seem to know what to do with me, which makes two of us. Weâve spent a lot of time talking, and heâs tried everything in his little bag of tricks, from talk therapy to Ambien to hypnosis. I was hopeful that the latter would produce some kind of miraculous results, but no such luck. The whole time he was instructing me to envision myself relaxing on a sandy beach, I was half-tempted to break into the chorus of âHypnotize,â by the Notorious B.I.G.âafter all, I might as well make use of the one aspect of my memory that seems to be in great working order. I stopped myself just in time. Heâs doing his best. Itâs not his fault Iâm such a crappy patient.
Instead, I told him about the dream, and he said that made sense, itâs me externalizing my anxiety or some such bullshit. I told him about my new
I try to keep busy, and to stay awake as long as possible, because every time I fall asleep, thereâs the dream. It doesnât matter if I sleep on the couch, the bed, the carpet. Every time, I wake up on my hands and knees, sweating like Iâve run a marathon, struggling for breath. Itâs gotten so that Iâm afraid to close my eyes. As soon as I do, the mountain looms in front of me, massive, covered in ice and snow. No matter how hard I try to wake up, no matter how hard I try to tell myself I am dreaming, the scenario plays out: the climb, the fall, the lack of air, the images rolling one after the other, the lines of poetryâwhich Iâve looked up online. Marvell, like I thought. The weird thing is, I donât know any of the other lines of the poem, and I donât know anything about Andrew Marvell. And given that my knowledge of popular culture, of books and politicsâof anything that doesnât have to do with my personal lifeâhas survived the accident intact, this strikes me as peculiar.
As if all of this werenât bad enough, whatever personality Iâve managed to maintain is, at least according to Grace and my friends, a little bit off. It started with the cigarettesâAmerican Spirits are my brand, there was never any doubt in my mindâand has spread to other things, like the type of music I listen to, what Iâm good at, and even what I like to eat. Dr. Perry has told me that this can happen after traumatic head injuries, that it will fade with time. Which is all well and good, but it doesnât change the way Grace looks at me when I pull a bottle of Gatorade from the refrigerator or tell her I canât stand tuna fish, or the way Taylor scrutinized me when I sketched an impromptu, accurate rendering of Nevada catching a ball in midairâlike Iâm a pod person from the planet Amnesia.
Iâve started to feel like maybe thereâs another person inside of me, dreaming that awful dream and missing the woman and the little boy. Itâs crazy, I know. I have the oddest feeling that on top of losing my sense of self, Iâve become a stranger who smokes American Spirits and climbs mountains and draws pictures and knows Marvell. Which is impossible, of course. And delusional. And just plain creepy.
The end result of all of this is that my self-confidence is shot to hell. I still canât remember anything, which is, of course, disastrous in and of itself. Then the things that I do remember arenât real, and half the time I eat something, drink something, do something, or say something, I get the pod person treatment. Obviously, Iâm not sleeping well. This canât go on, Iâm sure of it. Somethingâs got to give.
Iâve tried to convey some of this to the psychiatrist Dr. Perry recommended, with dubious results. I donât dislike Dr. Green. He isnât a bad guy, but he doesnât really seem to know what to do with me, which makes two of us. Weâve spent a lot of time talking, and heâs tried everything in his little bag of tricks, from talk therapy to Ambien to hypnosis. I was hopeful that the latter would produce some kind of miraculous results, but no such luck. The whole time he was instructing me to envision myself relaxing on a sandy beach, I was half-tempted to break into the chorus of âHypnotize,â by the Notorious B.I.G.âafter all, I might as well make use of the one aspect of my memory that seems to be in great working order. I stopped myself just in time. Heâs doing his best. Itâs not his fault Iâm such a crappy patient.
Instead, I told him about the dream, and he said that made sense, itâs me externalizing my anxiety or some such bullshit. I told him about my new
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