The story of my life isn't a tragedy—at least, not that I can recall. It isn't marked by a singular misfortune or a grand "bad" event that I can point to and say, "There, that is where it all went wrong." Instead, I am dealing with the art of living as a total amateur. Whether you call it fate or just a cosmic glitch, I am left with a sensation of being both lost and entirely empty.
They've started feeding me information now, a superficial dump of data intended to ground me. It doesn't feel real. It feels like someone reading me a grocery list for a house I don't live in.
Have you ever met someone with amnesia? I don't mean the "partial" kind you see in movies, where a single photograph brings everything rushing back in a cinematic blur. I mean a clean wipe. A blank sheet. There is an overwhelming panic in it, yes, but there is also the strange, non-voluntary movement of the subconscious. My hands move to adjust a silk collar I don't remember buying. My tongue forms words in a language I didn't know I spoke. I am a child again, but trapped in a body that already knows the world.
That's the part that haunts me as I sit in this sterile cabin. What part of my brain was wiped clean, and what was left behind?
I know the basic mechanics of existing. My speech is unaffected; my motor skills are sharp. I can feel the drop in temperature when the balcony door is left open, and I can sense the sterile weight of the sea air. I knew, instinctively, that I was on a ship when I woke up. The memory wipe didn't make me "dumb," but it did make me a ghost.
I stood there by the railing, watching the blue horizon blur past, and realized the most terrifying thing of all: I knew exactly what a cruise was, but I had no idea why I was the one standing on it