Would you rather have pink or blue nail polish? Would you rather be deaf or blind? Would you rather live as a vegetable or die as a hemophiliac? Would you rather wake up not knowing who you are or not wake up at all?
They, the doctors, want me to write. Anything, they said, even a scribble. I don’t remember how to write or to even hold a pencil. My fist clenches around it like a baby, like I had been reborn. These people, probably watching me from the video camera. Laughing. Like I was some sick joke. My face flushes, my eyes water stinging my cheeks, slipping down to drip on the paper. Leaving dark, shriveled, circles, in place of my words.
I cannot begin to describe how it feels when you don’t know yourself anymore. Waking up and recognizing nothing, from the colour of your hair or the dryness of you hands. Falling asleep one night after giving your mother a kiss not knowing the next time you see her you will scream in panic. As if it was all a recorded film that had been rewound, and the play button was stuck. Except for me, the play button wasn’t just stuck. It wasn’t there period.
This woman, my mother so I am told, places a photo next to bed the day after I wake up. After two months. The perfect family. In the background there is a man, smiling, his arm is around a girl. Looks like me. Something else is familiar. Is it his expression? The way his hand grips her shoulder instead of resting on it? Rage. I smash the picture to the floor. The glass shatters. I tear his face from the picture, the rest floats to the ground. The woman cries. The doctor nods. I wonder if I care.
They release me a few weeks later to the woman. She tells me we are going home. He’s gone. He can’t hurt you anymore. Legally I don’t need to go with her. But I do. She tells me about myself. My boyfriend, our pregnancy. I look down at myself wondering how a child had ever been there. Where was it now?
I kept the torn photo of him in my pocket. Obsessed. It took me a month but I found him. Daddy, I look at him wasted. Why did you do it? I remember what you did to me now. But I am not like you.
Would you rather wake up not knowing who you are or not wake up at all? It kills me to see him like this, slumped in his chair, snoring softly, absolutely unaware. A broken glass is on the floor. The red wine will stain the carpet. I will allow my blood to enter the blend. In time they will replace the carpet. Still the stain of his sin and mine shall remain. I look at my cracked reflection in the mirror. One shot. I look at him and pull the trigger. I would rather not wake up at all.