must have been before his amnesia.
Sean could never remember exactly when he had lost his memories, but it was sometime around three or four years ago. The amnesia had made a permanent blot on his life that he couldn’t undo, no matter how much he had begged the psychiatrists to help him or how much he tried to remember on his own. The psychiatrists had never been very helpful and had just av erted their eyes and mumbled that it was impossible, that the amnesia was permanent and he’d just have to suck it up.
He hated it, really. Maybe it wa s why he was so cynical . Even now , he still felt like he didn’t know who he was, had never known, because it was true that memories did partly define a person. Hayden and mother had tried to fill in the gaps, giving him limited and unsatisfying information. You were always a hap py child, his mother would say . We loved you very much. We still love you. But those were just words, and he didn’t believe them. You had a pretty boring life, Hayden would shrug when Sean turned to h im for answers instead. Nothing out of the ordinary. We were all ordinary. We still are.
Sometimes they told him stories about the past , but they were vague and didn’t help him a lot. Accor ding to them he’d had a perfectly happy life before . Surely that couldn’t be wholly true though. No one was that ordinary and perfect. What if everything they said was a lie? What if he wasn’t really related to his mother and Hayden? If he had been so damn unbelievably happy before, then why didn’t he have a father? They told him that he did hav e a father once, but that he’d left them. He’d asked why, countless times, determined to find out, but every time they both went cold and refused to answer. It doesn’t matter anymore, they’d say. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
But it did. Everything he didn’t know made dents in his chest until he felt like he was just a piece of paper that someone had used to test out a hole-puncher on . Flimsy, fragile, he hated the feeling. He’d felt like that almost constantly after he was first released from the hospital. Alone. He didn’t know anyone, had no choice but to believe them if they claimed that he’d known them before. He had moved to a new school, to start all over again. A short while later he had met Ali . She made it slightly better, the dents in his chest that is , because she was part of his new life so there was no reason to doubt her.
He never thought he would feel that alone again. But lying here beside his brother, like this, invisible and unable to be heard, came pretty damn close.
“You’re just as much of a jerk as he is, you know,” Sean mumbled quietly, th e insult directed at Hayden . “You’ve hid den half of my life from me. Then when I’m in trouble and I need your help, you don’t do anything . You just leave me alone like this, and go on thinking that nothing’s wrong.” He knew the accusations weren’t exactly fair, but the silence was stifling. He’d rather listen to his own voice than bear it any longer. “ You know, the first memory I have of you is waking up in a hospital bed and seeing you in the chair next to me with frazzled hair and tired eyes. I was actually scared of you to start with. I didn’t know where I was, who you were, or even who I was. I couldn’t remember my own bloody name. Funny thought, isn’t it? I could have been called Henry for all I know.
I guess I trusted you the most because you were the first person I woke up to. Mum came a while after and I do trust her too…but, maybe that’s why I’ve never been that close to her. I can’t remember what she was like, if she was nice or strict, if she made me go to bed at seven every night or not. I can’t remember you either. I can’t remember if we got along or not before, Hayden, or if we hated each other’s guts. I don’t think we did though. Sure, you are a jerk and so am I, but you’re pretty reliable most of the time.
Sean could never remember exactly when he had lost his memories, but it was sometime around three or four years ago. The amnesia had made a permanent blot on his life that he couldn’t undo, no matter how much he had begged the psychiatrists to help him or how much he tried to remember on his own. The psychiatrists had never been very helpful and had just av erted their eyes and mumbled that it was impossible, that the amnesia was permanent and he’d just have to suck it up.
He hated it, really. Maybe it wa s why he was so cynical . Even now , he still felt like he didn’t know who he was, had never known, because it was true that memories did partly define a person. Hayden and mother had tried to fill in the gaps, giving him limited and unsatisfying information. You were always a hap py child, his mother would say . We loved you very much. We still love you. But those were just words, and he didn’t believe them. You had a pretty boring life, Hayden would shrug when Sean turned to h im for answers instead. Nothing out of the ordinary. We were all ordinary. We still are.
Sometimes they told him stories about the past , but they were vague and didn’t help him a lot. Accor ding to them he’d had a perfectly happy life before . Surely that couldn’t be wholly true though. No one was that ordinary and perfect. What if everything they said was a lie? What if he wasn’t really related to his mother and Hayden? If he had been so damn unbelievably happy before, then why didn’t he have a father? They told him that he did hav e a father once, but that he’d left them. He’d asked why, countless times, determined to find out, but every time they both went cold and refused to answer. It doesn’t matter anymore, they’d say. What you don’t know can’t hurt you.
But it did. Everything he didn’t know made dents in his chest until he felt like he was just a piece of paper that someone had used to test out a hole-puncher on . Flimsy, fragile, he hated the feeling. He’d felt like that almost constantly after he was first released from the hospital. Alone. He didn’t know anyone, had no choice but to believe them if they claimed that he’d known them before. He had moved to a new school, to start all over again. A short while later he had met Ali . She made it slightly better, the dents in his chest that is , because she was part of his new life so there was no reason to doubt her.
He never thought he would feel that alone again. But lying here beside his brother, like this, invisible and unable to be heard, came pretty damn close.
“You’re just as much of a jerk as he is, you know,” Sean mumbled quietly, th e insult directed at Hayden . “You’ve hid den half of my life from me. Then when I’m in trouble and I need your help, you don’t do anything . You just leave me alone like this, and go on thinking that nothing’s wrong.” He knew the accusations weren’t exactly fair, but the silence was stifling. He’d rather listen to his own voice than bear it any longer. “ You know, the first memory I have of you is waking up in a hospital bed and seeing you in the chair next to me with frazzled hair and tired eyes. I was actually scared of you to start with. I didn’t know where I was, who you were, or even who I was. I couldn’t remember my own bloody name. Funny thought, isn’t it? I could have been called Henry for all I know.
I guess I trusted you the most because you were the first person I woke up to. Mum came a while after and I do trust her too…but, maybe that’s why I’ve never been that close to her. I can’t remember what she was like, if she was nice or strict, if she made me go to bed at seven every night or not. I can’t remember you either. I can’t remember if we got along or not before, Hayden, or if we hated each other’s guts. I don’t think we did though. Sure, you are a jerk and so am I, but you’re pretty reliable most of the time.
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