One evening I was returning home and was attacked by a man. Some say he just wanted to rob me, but there is a version that the man was an acquaintance of mine and was taking revenge for something, because my purse was still with me, but my memory was blown off after I was hit on the head.
I already had a husband and two children, but I had no memory of them. That unparalleled terrible feeling of fear and incomprehension, when seemingly strangers worry about you, run to hug you and call you “darling” or “mother. I didn’t remember them at all. My husband told me how we met at university, showed me photos and videos of the wedding, but he seemed like a stranger to me, and I myself seemed to be something different in the pictures. My children were a shock to me: what kind of person would you have to be to forget your daughters?
For a long time I could not accept the idea that I would have to live with people I did not know, who for some reason were convinced that they loved me and wanted me to love them back… Another trauma decided everything. After two months in the hospital, I was wandering between wards in the evening, trying to find a nurse, and I caught myself on the threshold of the stairwell and rolled down the stairs, hitting my head on one of the stairs. The memories came over me in a wave, squeezing my skull so tightly that I felt faint.
My whole life flashed before my eyes, and I remembered my husband, my children, and even the first time I had been drunk… The doctors later said that it was because of some kind of swelling that was pressing on something in my head, and during the new blow there was a contraction and must have been magic, which unlocked the memories I cherished most.
My husband cried all the next day, thinking I was tricking him or joking, or trying to cheer him up by exaggerating. But I really remembered him. The only thing I didn’t remember was what my attacker looked like and what he really wanted.
Those were the most confusing and long months of my life, the craziest, and I wouldn’t wish that on an enemy. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone, except maybe the man who had done this to me.
