The floor is concrete in all directions into the darkness. A single conical shaft of light is at the middle of the space about 12 feet above the floor but without a source. I am standing beneath the light trying make sense of my situation. Suddenly chains fly out of the floor, tie around me, and pull me flat to the floor. I call out, beg, scream for help to no avail as no one can hear me. No one knows I am here. Second become minutes, hours, days and yet I continue to call out to the void for help.

From above the bed, I watch my wife and I sleep. I see my body writhing on the bed locked into yet another nightmare. At some point my wife gets up and leaves and never comes back. I have been abandoned in a time of need. How can she do this!? Months pass and yet I am screaming for help.

I slam against the wall and fall to the floor and struggle to stand. My wife gets me settled seated on the bed hold and rocking me, trying to calm and soothe me. She begins asking me questions. Do I know where I am? No. How can I? I am seeing multiple rooms superimposed on each other, doors where there are walls, walls where there are doors. I cannot make sense of anything and am not trusting my senses. Do I know who she is. "You're my wife." "What! No! We are not married." My senses collapse even more at that statement. From her questions she learns that we are married, and the date is July 12, 2032. We are living in countryside of New York State. I ask her why she abandoned me. She was working down the hall. She had never abandoned me. She has me touch my body to bring home the point that everything I know to be true is most certainly not. The wrong parts, parts underdeveloped, hair where there should be none, minimal hair where there should be much, and my voice has the wrong pitch. WTF! It is November 1st, 2024 and it is undeniable and only adding to my confusion. My memory prior to November 1st is effectively gone and in its place, 8 years of a very full, successful, happy life, where my girlfriend and I had been together for 8 years and married for 6. 8 years of life that never was.

After several hours I was in a more coherent place mentally and through her questions she learned many details of the upcoming eight years. She was trying to poke rational holes in this memory to help me come to acceptance of what actually is real but what she got instead was a nearly air-tight description of what was to come. Still, the reality was impossible to deny. It is November 1st; I am missing my memory and the memory I have of a very desirable life is not real in the slightest.

This was devastation on top of devastation on top of devastation. What I know about me going back at least 8 years is mostly what I have been told, and I have to accept in good faith.

My mental health therapist and psychiatrist notice a night and day difference in me. In the dream I had undergone enough mental health treatment to finally be able to engage in trauma therapy and got enough trauma therapy to go back to school and get sufficient education to have a worthwhile and lucrative career and to also finally get off of social security disability. Ultimately my career was as a freelance graphic artist. One cannot be successful at freelance work without have a high amount of self-confidence, a trait I did not have pre-November 1st. Also, somehow some of the mental health work I had done in this false life actually translated into real life, something I cannot begin to understand.

In trying to learn about myself I have come to recognize that I am not like the person who inhabited this body prior to November 1st. Looking at her search histories and browser tabs, looking at her possessions the orders and arrangements of her belongings I cannot understand what she was thinking. Our music tastes while similar are actually quite different. I also do not seem to think or behave like she did, and I feel about things differently from her (these things told to me by people who do not recognize me in these things). And while I am not like the pre-November 1st person I am also not like the false life person either.

I feel robbed twice over. A missing history and also ripped from a life I do remember so clearly and long for. I lost my career, my friends, my family, my life, but so much more, I lost my wife of 6 years and partner of 8 years. I continue to deeply grieve all of this loss.

I have come to understand that a sense of identity is closely tied to a history I can remember. I have no sense of identity.

In a weird way I was kind of born that morning on November 1st. The last two and a half months feel like a lifetime but then it is the only real history I can clearly remember and with continuity. I know I must engage in trauma therapy as my therapist believes that my brain shut down after too strain from all of the work on my life, I am told I was doing over the last year. This is something I am desperate to avoid repeating but the soonest safe time for me to actually do this therapy is late April and more likely some time in June and this feels like 2 or 3 lifetimes from now.

This experience has me feeling exponentially more isolated than the serious mental health issues I still deal with. I do not know anyone who can even begin to understand just those issues so how can most people begin to understand such a profound loss of memory and then to have a persistent false memory with great clarity inserted but also revoked by waking? The feeling of isolation is painful beyond words and now I am desperately seeking others who can relate in some way

Transient Global Amnesia Community

About This Community

Inspire community guidelines

Resources

About this community