“You know, I’ve always hated when people… pitied me for things. It always felt so disingenuous, you know? Like, you tell somebody this awful thing that happened to you, and… they can’t think of any other way to respond than just pity. It almost feels belittling. [pause] That’s why I don’t really like to tell people things about my life. I hate that feeling of being looked at like this tragic figure, like I stop being a person and I turn into this… tragedy. [pause] Anyway, uh… Eight months ago I had a stroke and lost… all of my memories. There it is. That’s the… awful thing in my life. Eight months ago, my brain just short-circuited, and now everything is gone. Every single thing. Every birthday, every childhood friend, every vacation, everything is gone. [pause] And it… it can’t ever come back. There are parts of my life that I will only ever learn about through other people. I’ll never be able to remember them… It's terrible.
My one comfort has been… that I’ve not been going through it alone. When I had my stroke the first thing that was there, that I saw when I opened my eyes in the hospital, the first things I saw were my parents. Standing there. They were so happy to see me. They were less happy when they realised I didn’t know… I didn’t know who they were. But they stuck with me. They have helped me every step of the way. They took me to see specialists, they did all the research they possibly could to help me, they have been nothing but supportive. And it’s been so nice! My life has been misery ever since the stroke, but… but it’s been less miserable because of them.
Uh, ok, I guess I have to be honest. It isn't exactly accurate to say that I lost all of my memories. I have one. I don't… remember exactly when it’s from, but it’s from around when I had the stroke, I think? Might’ve been a day before, might’ve been a week, I’m not sure, but I think it was around the same time. I don’t really know what’s happening in it. All I remember is, just, running. It’s dark, and I’m in the woods, and I’ve got a flashlight but it’s dim, and I’m running, I don’t know if I’m running ‘cause I’m scared or if I’m running from something, I- no idea what’s going on! But I remember it. I don’t know why that’s the thing that I remember, but… at least it’s something.
Anyway, like I said, my parents have been taking care of me for the past eight months, and one of the things they’ve been doing for me is driving me around. I’ve been scared to drive, just… I’ve got this fear, that I’m gonna be on the road, and I’m gonna have another stroke, and I’m gonna crash and… it’s stupid, I mean, I have not had another stroke, even a sign of another stroke, for… since I had the first one! But I’m scared that I am going to have one, it’s gonna happen while I’m on the road, and I’m going to kill someone, it’s just- so I- I haven’t… driven myself anywhere. So my parents have. They both have jobs and lives of their own, but… they always make time for me.
Thing is, though, I noticed something a bit… strange? Whenever they get in the car, and I get in the passenger’s seat, they- they reach to turn on the radio? But, they don’t tune it to a specific station. Ever. They just play static. I’ve asked them why before but they just look at me with this blank stare, like they don’t understand the words that’re coming out of my mouth. I’ve asked if we can play music before, but they just say we already are.
Anyway, that’s a very minor thing, it’s a bit weird, but… fine, I guess. Sorry, I don’t wanna badmouth my parents. [pause] But, I started thinking, about the static, and how strange it was, and… and then I started thinking… how strange they are. You know, as people? [pause] There’s lots of little things they do that… don’t really make all that much sense. Sorry, that’s- I probably sound like I’m going mad, just- just bear with me, ok? There was the static in the car, but… I’ve had times where I talk to them about, just, normal life things, and they look at me like they have no idea what I’m talking about. And I don’t mean like they just aren’t educated, I mean like basic life things that anybody would know anything about. They just… don’t know. [pause] And sometimes they just… act weird? That sounds, just, the most broad thing in the world, but it’s true, sometimes they just act… so slightly off. Sorry, I am being so suspicious of my parents, who have been, again, taking care of me, their amnesiac daughter, for months without even complaining once, and I sound like I am so spoiled right now, but… but the more I kept thinking about it… I think there’s something weird going on.
Ever since the stroke I haven’t really been out much. They drive me around, sure, but they don’t have to often, ‘cause I don't really… go anywhere. I don’t really have many friends, or any friends, to be honest, and I don’t work anymore… I spend most of my time at home. Dunno, I just… hang out there, I guess. So maybe, maybe, I am just completely forgetting how normal people act, and I’m just… completely misjudging the things my parents do, and maybe I am just going insane, and maybe all this stuff, but…
My parents have these… pictures up around the house. [pause] This- this is really gonna make me sound insane. They’ve got these pictures up around the house of me and them as, well when I was a child. And I’ve never really looked too closely at them, ‘cause… I mean, they’re me. That’s obvious, they’re me, it’s my parents and it’s a small child that looks like me, it’s me in the pictures. [pause] A few days ago I looked at one of them… closer than I had before… and I noticed the child had a birthmark that I don’t have. It’s the oddest thing. I look at the person in the picture, and they look… like me. But not exactly. Their hair is the same colour, but it’s a different shade, and it’s curly in a different way than mine, and their eyes are a different shape, and… it’s small things, imperceptible, but… the more I looked at it, the more sure I got that the child in that photo wasn’t me. I looked at other ones, and… none of them were me. And they weren’t the same child either, they were all different children that looked very close to me, but they- they weren’t me. They couldn’t ever have been me.
My parents don’t even really look like me. They look close to me, so similar to me, but they don’t look like me. We’ve got different, slightly different shades of hair, and slightly different undertones to our skin colour, and… [mumbling] I am going mad, I am… the isolation of it all is just driving me mad, I- that’s it, that’s- that’s all, that’s the explanation, I just…
There has to be a proper explanation. For- for all of this, I-
You know, the thing about my parents… I’ve never seen them eat anything? I’ve lived with them for… ever, assumedly… but I’ve never seen them eat anything. And every time I have a conversation with them, I… I don’t remember what their eyes look like. I don’t remember what colour they are. I must look at them while I talk to them, but I don’t know what colour they are. I- I- I’m thinking, I’m trying to think of it now, but I don’t know what colour their eyes are! I just don’t know!
Saying that I lost all my memories is lying. I’ve been getting some back. Just small ones, barely anything, but- [Note: Tape shut off and then back on here, not sure how or why. Doesn’t seem to cut out anything.] - I’ve been scared that they’re fake memories, because… some of them have my parents in them, and-, and- my parents in my memories are not my parents.
They look… similar? I suppose? But they’re not the same people. They’re… just not- and they’re not the people in the pictures either! They- they have different body types, and hair, and all of this stuff, they have my traits, but they express them in different ways! If that makes any sense, the- the people who I think of as my parents in my memories are not the people I’m living with.
And the more I remember, the more I-... I don’t know who they are. I don’t know… I don’t know who I’ve been living with for the past eight months. If they aren’t my parents, then… then I’ve been living with strangers. [pause] But- they have to be my parents, they- they have to be my parents.
You know, there was this thing, that happened recently- so I’ve been having to do lots of paperwork, and stuff, and, one thing is that they will often ask for your birth certificate, and so I went and I asked my parents ‘hey do you have my birth certificate’ and they were like ‘of course, sure, um, we can find it but we’ll have to get it to you, like, in a bit, ‘cause we don’t know where it is’, and I was like ‘sure’, and next day they hand it to me, and I give it to the people, and they say ‘this is fake’. They say ‘you’ve given us a fake birth certificate’.
[pause] Why did… if they were really my parents why did they give me a fake birth certificate? Why don’t they have mine? It wasn’t old either, it was freshly printed. They just- made one up for me… But if they’re not my parents, why did the hospital say they were? I’m in the system, supposedly, why did the hospital say those people were my parents? They- they have to be my parents, they- they have to be, they must’ve just lost my birth certificate, and so they printed off a new one, and they thought that nobody would notice, and- and they must just act weird, and I must have false memories, or…
I keep coming back to that… that memory. It’s such a… strange thing to remember. [pause] If my parents- those… strangers I’m living with, really are strangers…what can I do about it? I can’t leave, I don’t have anywhere to go, I don’t have a job, I- I don’t have any friends. Living with my parents is the only choice I have, and if they’re not my parents… what can I do? I don’t have anywhere to go. I-
I keep coming back to that memory in the forest. I’m- I’m running, and- and it’s dark, and- and I’ve got a flashlight, and I’m tired, and my legs hurt, and I’m running, and my flashlight’s batteries are dying, and I’ve been running for hours, and I’m so tired, and I’m so scared, and I’m so cold, and the twigs are scraping off my polyester jacket, and they make this specific, specific, specific sound that I keep hearing, but it’s not what I’m focusing my hearing on, i’m focusing my hearing on the sound of the footsteps of the thing behind me, and the sound of it’s voice that isn’t a voice, and it keeps shouting at me, and calling my name, and it knows my name, and it knows my family, and it’s yelling at me, and it’s yelling at me with it’s voice that couldn’t be anything that could ever be a voice, but it can’t be anything else either, and- and it’s yelling at me and it knows my name and it knows what my name is and I don’t even know what my name is anymore, and it’s shouting at me, and it’s shouting and I…
On my birth certificate, the fake birth certificate, my name is Jamie Foster, and when I woke up at the hospital everybody said my name was Jamie Foster, and my parents call me Jamie. It’s not my name! I- I’ve been remembering more and that isn’t my name. My name isn’t Jamie, it's Ada. Ada Valerie Liston. That’s my name. And- and I like my name, and I don’t know why people call me a different name, I- I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything I don’t understand why my parents act like that and I don’t understand why I can’t remember what colour their fucking eyes are and I don’t know what’s going on and I don’t know anything anymore.
After my stroke I went in for brain scans- it’s routine, just to make sure there's no underlying thing, or whatever, and- and my doctors said they’d never seen anything like it before. They called it a stroke because they didn’t know what else to call it.
I keep thinking about that memory of running through the woods, and my flashlight’s about to die, and I’m more scared than I’ve ever been in my life, and the thing behind me is speaking with something that- that I only call a voice because there isn’t anything else it could possibly be, but it’s not like any voice I’d ever heard before, not in my entire life, and- it couldn’t be a voice, voices don’t sound like that, and it knows my name and it knows my name my real name my actual, real name, and it’s yelling at me and it’s calling me Ada, and it’s chasing me through the woods, and it’s been chasing me for hours, and I’m just running, and I’m running, and I’m running, and it’s so dark, and I can see the moon through the trees, and I- I don’t know where I am and I don’t know where home is, and I don’t know how to leave, and I don’t know how to do anything, and I’m just running and it’s so dark, and my feet hurt because I keep tripping over the rocks and stuff, and- and I’m running, and I trip, and there’s a sharp rock in front of me, and I hit my head, and- and I can feel my face go warm as blood leaks down onto it from my forehead, and I turn around and I look at the thing and it has my mom’s face.
[pause] It’s wearing it like a mask. It’s not the face of my mom in my memory, it’s the face of the mother, the thing that sits in the room next to me right now. It’s got her face. And if I try, if I try to remember that voice, it’s got that too. It sounds like her.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I want to believe… that I’m just going mad. That all of this is…nonsense. But I can’t. Because that thing had my mother’s face, the stranger that calls itself my mother, and… and I don’t know what colour their eyes are, and they listen to static, and they don’t know what people are supposed to, really meant to know about, the basics of being human, and my name isn’t my name, nobody knows my name, and I don’t have anywhere to go, and I don’t-...
I keep trying to think of what colour their eyes are by thinking… that whatever mine are, they must be that too? But I don't remember what mine are, either.
[pause] I must know…I don’t know why I don’t.
I keep thinking of… being in that forest. Of that thing. If it really chased me all that way… would it really just wipe my memory? If it really… took people’s skin like that, like what I saw… would it really just have wiped my memory?
[whispered] What am I?”
die einde.