Story Six: Remember.

            Today I woke up on the wrong side of the bed. Literally. My head was where my feet should be, and my feet were where my head should be. Why? Because I move in my sleep, I guess.

            Last night was really the first night I’d slept in a while. Things haven’t been going so well lately, and I can’t sleep worth a penny.  Maybe I didn’t even sleep last night. Maybe I dreamt I slept, when in reality I was walking around and finally got so tired I couldn’t remember which way I was supposed to lay when I laid down on the bed. Or maybe I had been drinking, and just forgot about it. Maybe a girl came over, but when I asked her to stay the night, she clubbed my over the head like those b******s club the little seals in the arctic.

            Or maybe I slept and I just moved a lot.

            This is the most likely.

            I can be pretty anxious sometimes, I guess. But don’t tell anyone I told you that. My therapist said I shouldn’t tell people about my anxiety. It makes them uncomfortable.

            I put on new clothes and I stretched and I brushed my teeth and I spit the toothpaste out. The kitchen was cleaner than ever, but it still felt dirty to me. Nothing is every really clean enough, is it? We can’t clean away the atoms.

            I made eggs and poured orange juice and looked at the Sunday News Paper, even though today is actually Wednesday. The Sunday paper is free at the coffee house when it’s after Sunday. I take the Sunday paper on Monday and keep it. In this case, I was too tired and too upset to read it yesterday, and I can’t remember what I did on Monday, and instead I’m reading it this morning. Wednesday.

            The Sunday news is pretty dull. This town is quite small, and not much happens, to tell you the truth. Nothing at all. The front page article titles for the Sunday Paper:

 

LOCAL WOMAN TEACHES NEIGHBOURHOOD KIDS HOW TO KNIT

 

MAN ARRESTED FOR CHASING WOMAN DOWN STREET WITH LEAFBLOWER

 

            I would have laughed if I could remember how.

            I went back into my room.

            Under my bed is a large box, just a normal brown one, labeled “Remember.”

            There is a girl I remember all the time, and her name is Anne. I see her all the time, everyday that I actually get up and leave my house. I see her often, in the street and in the coffee house and in the grocery store. I used to think I was just imagining her, to tell you the truth, but I think that perhaps I really am not. My therapist tells me she is real, and I must believe him since I pay him one hundred dollars per hour session.

            The funniest thing is that she, Anne, remembers me as well. I guess that means that I am real too, though I must admit if that is true I don’t really know what “real” means.

            She says hello to me in the supermarket and at the coffee house and on the street. But she does not just say hello to me. She never says my name, and sometimes I wonder how she knows me if she never shows any sign of knowing my name! “Hello, darling,” she says. Darling. I have hardly heard this term used before, it is nothing like what I have heard in my conversations with others around here. Only she says it, and she says it every time we cross paths.

            I speak funny, they say. I do not think this is the case, however, I think I speak fine. It is you who speak funny. But I do not judge them even when they are judging me.

            Anne does not seem to judge me. She says hello and waves and says goodbye, and I do the same to her, always smiling but never saying anything, afraid that maybe I have remembered her name wrong or do not actually know her. What if she is just being friendly? What if she is only not judging me because she had not yet heard me speak, has not yet heard my different sounding language? My words are different than hers, even though they are the very same. 

            So I try not to leave my house on days that I want to talk.

            Some days I want to speak. I want to yell and say words up high to the heavens! “Hello! What a wonderful day! How’s the weather? Have you tried this coffee? Are you from America?” These things I want to say, but I am afraid to say them to other people outside and mostly I am afraid to say them to Anne. My therapist says it is counterproductive to do things that I am afraid to do. I am afraid because Mother Nature is telling me to be afraid, for my own safety. Animals who do not follow their instinct die, and surly I do not want to die, so I shall follow my instincts. So today, I stay inside.

            The weather is so beautiful, so sunny, so bright. Crystal clear is the air, and I want to touch it with my fingers, but as soon as I reach out, I cannot feel anything new. Perhaps because I am all the time touching the air, and do not know what it feels like to be otherwise.

            What do I do when I stay at home for days, you might ask? Well I read and I look at the objects in my house and I imagine what life would be like if there were more people who could be inside my own brain. We all live inside ourselves, no one else can hear or read or see or feel my thoughts. But what if someone could? Would they still be someone else? Would they be me as well, and then “me” would be more than the me that exists now, but still a me nonetheless. I would be alone but still with company. I think a lot when I am home for days, the days I want to talk.

Sometimes I stay home even on days I do want to talk. I talk and talk and talk! I talk to the walls and to the ceiling and I talk to the oranges in the bowl on the counter that my neighbor, Pricella, put there. 

            Oh, of course, I have not yet introduced you to Pricella! She is a lovely girl, I really do think. Sometimes on days that I want to talk, I can talk to Pricella and know that she will not make fun of me. She lives next door to me in the apartment building. My apartment is bigger than you might think, and she likes to come over sometimes to chat and cleans when she is here. I always tell her, “Pricella, please do not clean while you are here, it is my house to clean and I do indeed feel sad that you think it is messy.” She replies always, “It is not messy, I just like to keep my hands busy and my friends happy.” So I let her, because I like to keep my friends happy as well, and if cleaning makes her happy then cleaning she shall do.

            Pricella is about sixteen years old, I do believe. She comes over to visit me because her mother does not let her out much, and since I am just next door it is very easy to sneak away for moments at a time. She is very sheltered, her mother has never let her date or watch bad movies or go out past nine o’clock. I feel bad for her, of course. I offered to talk to her mother for her, but Pricella said, “No, no! She will be so mad at me, thinking I speak ill of my own mother’s rules to other people! Strangers, no less!” “I am not a stranger to you!” I say, saddened. “Of course not,” she laughs, “but you are to her.”

            Pricella was born in the big city, and had lived there her whole life until last year when she moved to this town. I am older than Pricella, though not by much. Just by enough to live on my own and not be a teenager anymore. I am glad she moved to this town, not just because of me, but also because I think it is nice to move. It seems to me like a long time to stay situated in one land. I have never stayed in one house for more than a year, if I can remember correctly. Of course, I cannot be positive, with this brain of mine. This is why I keep the box under my bed.

            The box is full of everything. Everything I need to remember. I keep every photograph and every note and every receipt and every ticket. Sometimes I wake up and go out and people ask me what I did last night. I can think back and say I went out drinking until four in the morning with my friends, and I will think this is true, but they know it is not. I look in the box, and one receipt tells me I went out to the diner to eat a burger and paid at 7:42pm. Also in the box is a journal that I use to tell me what time I go to bed and what my dreams are. It says last night I went to bed at 9:15pm. No dreams for today are written yet because I just woke up and cannot yet remember what I dreamed.