I know! It’s ridiculous and weird, not normal, but it did really happen!” She was so excited. For a 23-year-old, she lived a terribly ordinary life. Strange incidents that made for great stories never happened to her. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she had a good story to tell. She couldn’t even remember a good joke to tell.  Extremely introverted she had absolutely no social life. And thank goodness because what would she talk about if she ever showed up at gatherings?

Today, she was brimming with joy and excitement and she had only him to share it with. He had his back turned to her. She couldn’t tell if he was really sleeping or merely pretending to.

“Are you listening to me?” Her tone was always tender.

He turned over to face her before saying, “Yes, but are you listening to yourself?”

There was barely any light in the room save for the flickering of the solitary streetlamp outside. If he had looked he would have seen her enormous eyes glistening with sadness. He stroked her hair gently, “Go to sleep please? We both have an early morning tomorrow!” He said.

Would he have been as aloof if she was making love to him instead of telling him her story?  She couldn’t tell but she need not have wondered. Within seconds he was snoring like an out of tune tuba. Maybe he really was too tired to listen? Or was she simply unwilling to believe what she knew in her heart? She didn’t want to admit that her story was not worth the little attention she could ask for—would you not have felt the same?

While he slept like a log beside her, she tossed and turned, burning with the angst and emotions inside—the story unspoken.

She couldn’t really tell what it was that she experienced except that it was real. She had hoped it was not. She hoped it was something extraordinary, don’t we all?

She began to think back to the days when they had just met. Two years ago, when they had just started dating, he had once said to her that she was unlike anyone he had ever met. “You miss, you might be a terribly quiet person, but when you start telling a story, I just want to keep listening to you.” She couldn’t remember what she was talking about that night, but she did remember how safe and seen she felt.

 Then her train of thoughts quickly veered then derailed and she found herself jolted from the past to be stranded in a desolate present, she could not have foreseen.  

A sad smile painted her face as she remembered how she thought she was extraordinary every time she had had a Déjà vu. The day she discovered that everybody felt this way, she felt heartbroken. She had tossed and turned all night, sleepless. It was a ridiculously sad feeling  and even today, when she thinks back, the heart lurched in its cage.

She had to get the experience out of her system in order to reflect on it. She knew she would fail to make sense of it or let go of it until her thoughts escaped the precincts of her mind. She turned for a last time and slid out of bed. Mid-October nights are very cold, she grabbed his sweater left on the chair, grabbed her bag from the table and carefully closed the door behind her.

............

She took a long sigh before starting to write. She couldn’t remember the last time she did this. Her fingers slightly shivered as they hovered over the keyboard. Then she started and words would bleed out of, effortlessly.

“Day 1.

Do you know that feeling when your feet are moving but you are not? Do you know that feeling when you are moving towards the light at the other end knowing you are surrounded by darkness on all sides? Do you know that feeling when the street feels like a tread mill that is set to one light year per minute?

I know it, I felt it and I’ll probably never forget it though I wish I would.

I was there continuously moving, but ridiculously stuck.

Perhaps there will never be anybody who will not just listen but resonate with those extraordinary feelings, I cannot describe.

Until that day—and for now—I do not know whether I write to remember or to forget.