Sea monsters

It's not like you have forgotten the people or the things that have happened in your life. It's more a case that you need to be reminded of them. Then you can start fitting it all back together. In the mornings, as soon as your husband walks in the room, your brain begins to reassemble everything. Okay, you think, that is my husband. And you begin to remember things about your husband. The act of seeing him triggers a cluster of memories that might otherwise be out of reach. Every day is like this. Struggling to regain your past.

The anxiety comes knowing you are constantly forgetting. Imagine involuntarily forgetting one of your children exists. The maddening things is that you are constantly asking yourself, "Okay, what am I missing? What do I need reminding of?" Because when you look in the mirror, you see a woman who has part of the story but never the whole thing.

One of your biggest fears is, what if there were no reminders? Is it possible you could become this blank person? This person who remembers nothing? This is something that worries you even though it's completely irrational. Irrational in the sense that you family are all there, supporting you on a daily basis.

There are a lot of photographs set up around the house to help. More than a normal household. This means you are not constantly asking who am I? Rather, you are taking inventory, rediscovering the details and the connections. There are photographs of your kids, your husband, your parents, your in-laws. There are photographs of the holidays you have been on. You as a teenager in a school uniform. There are photographs of the house you currently live in, this house situated in a North Shore fern and sandstone gully, and the city itself, complete with skyline and harbour. Sydney. The place where you grew up as proven by the hard photographic evidence decorating the walls of this house. All these things need to be remembered. You need reminding if not on a daily basis, then every couple of days. You are always fighting the erosion of your damaged memory. A person with a normally functioning brain understands where they come from. They have their story at hand. Left to your own devices, you would probably lose access to your own history.

It's like completing a jigsaw. And when you turn around, someone has come along and started pulling the jigsaw apart so you have to start again. Piece by piece. This is an ongoing process. Erosion and repair. As you well know, it is a very frustrating state of existence.

You have a limited ability to retrieve these memories. And as a result, you are constantly worried that the past is getting smaller. That something might be permanently forgotten. You take medication. It is supposed to help. They scan your head in that noisy and frightening MRI tunnel. Try to relax, they say, but it is very distressing. The claustrophobia. You have a regular appointment with a neurologist once a month. This man has a plastic model of a human brain, the separate sections of which are all the colour of ice cream flavours. He cheerfully pulls apart the plastic brain on his desk and discusses your head injury. He refers to the damage resulting from the impact you took to the medial temporal lobe. And when he explained what is happening to you, he used a biro to point to an inner section called the hippocampus. As a fun bit of trivia, he explains this part of the brain resemblances a seahorse in shape and was named accordingly. From the Greek, 'hippos' meaning 'horse' and 'Kampos' meaning 'sea monster'. Your sea monster isn't working as it should, he jokes.

To help reboot your failing memory, you are encouraged to write a users guide to.....you. In effect, instructions on how to be....you! This includes a short account of what has happened in your life to date. Nothing too extensive, advises the doctor. Keep things simple. Just a letter to yourself containing biographical information and some information about your condition for the sake of context. This, along with all the photographs, will help alleviate some anxiety you are experiencing, he says. Some the anxiety brought on by your processing distortion.

So that's what you do. You write a letter to yourself. You explain how your life works and what has happened. Your husband and your kids help out. They sit at the laptop with you and help you put these things into words. And when there is doubt, you reach for the letter and start reading. And there it is. Your life in black and white. The only problem is, you start getting this persistent feeling that something important is still missing. That the narrative is incomplete.

When asked, your husband Jim doesn't want to talk about it. "That's exactly what happened", he insists. "That is it. End of story. You're worrying about something that isn't there". There is something hostile in the way he replies. As far as you are concerned, it feels like suppressed frustration. Sometimes all you have to go on is instinct. A feeling. And this doesn't feel right. Reading this letter is like watching a movie with a missing scene. It feels like your husband is holding back. And your wonder, what is being hidden from me?

Sometime later you are holding an old photo in your hand. A photo of what looks like a rural property and suddenly you think Bingo! We used to live here, on this property. We were not always city people. A door in your brain unlocks and another chunk of the past slides into view. And suddenly you remember being in that landscape. Being part of it. This opens up more questions, most notably, why the people in your family don't talk about this part of their lives? Your grown kids drop by and there is never talk about the farm. How could they skirt over such a large piece of the puzzle? How could they have allowed this to happen?

And Jim, your husband says, "Okay, okay, just relax, will you? You can't be expected to remember everything. We lived in the country. There was nothing more to it. Five years. Not even five years, more like four. It doesn't matter." But you need to know more because the not knowing is making you crazy. No stone unturned right? If only that damn little sea monster in your head would just wake up and start working.....

You find another photo. This one is of you leaning against the fender of a dusty car you don't remember owning. You are smiling at the lens, squinting against the sun. The car has obviously been beaten by unpaved country roads and rural tasks. Now you remember that you used to drive this car around the property, the windows open and music playing on the stereo. And then you remember Mick. Mick's face. His eyes and his smile. That moment when he said, let's take a photo of you. And then you remember that you used to meet Mick in different places. There was a hotel room. And a clearing out in the bush at the end of an axle hobbling dirt track. You and this Mick guy in the back of that dusty car. Once or twice in your own house when Jim and the kids were away somewhere.

And there was one evening when you were both heading somewhere at night. By that point, the relationship had turned into more than sex. You were in love with this man. Had these feeling been mutually articulated? Anyway, you knew for certain that you loved him. And you unzipped his jeans while he drove. Just driving around so you didn't have to go home. And you began playing with him until he was hard. And you undid your safety belt and he did the same. And he leant over and kissed you first on the mouth and then on the neck, and when you broke apart the car had drifted off the road. And even though Mick tried to twist the wheel it was too late. Weeds began whipping and cracking under the front bumper as you bounced down a surprisingly steep incline. The rest of what followed was in fragments. There was a moment of silent weightlessness. The tree was waiting for you both at the bottom of the ditch. A think, pale truck targeted by the vehicles' headlights. A hypnotic zoom in on sudden unconsciousness.

The facts were Mick broke his neck at the point of impact. Your head left an egg cup shaped dent in the spider-webbed windshield.

But before all this, you remember that you had a relationship with Mick for what must have been a year. It was purely sex at first but then you figured out that maybe there was more to it. Yes, there was. You talked about leaving your husband and Mick talked about leaving his wife. About moving back to Sydney. And although this was all just pillow talk at first, the plan started to seem feasible. Why not? People do it every day. They leave and they reinvent themselves.

The truth was you were never happy with your husband. It took meeting Mick to figure this out. Your husband wasn't a bad person. He was practical and dutiful and at times stifling because of these qualities. You were just another part of his life that needed to be seen to. You hadn't grown up in the country. The longer you were with him, the more you felt like something that needed to be contained and sectioned off in a paddock. A required asset like the equipment in the shed. An item to be checked off the list.

To his credit, even though you were going to leave him, Jim stuck by you and picked up all the pieces. When you woke up in hospital your family was at your bedside. Your kids had closed ranks around their dad. They still love you but now, almost grudgingly so. How could a woman give up her children and her husband for another man? After he has provided for her? You had been on the verge of crushing their father. The whole thing dredges up mixed feelings. Sadness, anger, guilt.

To what extent was Mick really the answer? The love of your life? You can't be sure now. The details keep on slipping away. His eyes and his hands. Mick driving lazy, one hand draped over the wheel. The hotel room. After more secretive research using the computer, you are saddened to learn this happened nearly a decade ago. And sure you managed to find these photographs. And you will attempt to hide them from Jim again. But for how long? One day Jim will find them and that will be the end of Mick. And all you will be left with is that unaccountable feeling that something is missing.