Clockwork

First Chapter

Suppose that I was a cliche.

Suppose that I was some beautiful girl with sunshine-lit hair, enigmatic eyes, and an amazing body with everything at the palm of her hands. Oh and here comes the best part. She doesn’t even know it. (She probably has some hot overprotective brother too.) And she proceeds to be swept off by some Prince Charming that’s captain of the high school football team, freaking attractive with a hot body, has a douchebag personality (and we all know that he’s secretly a sweet teddy bear inside whose parents are divorced and that’s what blew up his shit and that’s why he doesn’t trust anybody until the girl with the sunshine shit hair prances in). And a six pack. Let’s not forget the six pack. Ooh and he’s a baaaaaad boy. Like the kind with sexy smoulders and expensive motorcycles even though they work part time at some cheap ass restaurant as some hot waiter because their family is financially unstable.

I think I could have led this life. If it wasn’t for two inevitable things:

Anterograde fucking amnesia.

And the fact I was not a girl with sunshine shat hair. Or anything mentioned really. Okay, so it was a lot of inevitable things. But anterograde fucking amnesia has to be the prime fuck up of my life. Other kids complain about not getting into their dream college or that their favorite TV character died or not being able to meet their favorite One Direction member. My complaints were on a whole new level. Firstly, I wasn’t able to meet my favorite 5SOS member. Secondly, in my favorite TV show, everyone is already DEAD. Thirdly, I got into my dream college and guess who fucked it up?

Anterograde fucking amnesia. Or we can abbreviate it to AFA for short.

The Internet defined it (san the fucking) as a loss of the ability to make new memories after the event that caused the amnesia. For me, it was some kind of fuck up designed by the Man Up There to ruin my life. But that doesn’t matter. I won’t remember that by tomorrow.

So I was diagnosed one year ago. One year wasn’t enough to know the full consequences and its impact on the state of my life (though I wasn’t sure I even had a life before my accident) but it was just enough to reach a conclusion: It sucked. Balls.

AFA entailed for memory loss every couple of days. There wasn’t really a timeframe between memory losses; it was always random. I’d say it’s about three to five days but that’s according to my mother. I just take what I get.

Apparently after the accident, my brains sucked at being brains even more so. I mean, being bad at maths is fair enough. But having life throw brain damage instead of lemons at you? How the hell do you make lemonade out of that exactly?

And It wasn’t like I had AFA. I guess it bordered between the lines of okay AFA and severe AFA. Like yesterday, I rose from my bed, a queen sized Sleep Number with lilac sheets, and I was utmost confused when I found that my mom didn’t wake me up in time for school and that it wasn’t Friday. Or that it wasn’t July anymore. It was in the middle of the fucking winter.

And it was Wednesday. The third Wednesday of January and I felt like I just woke up in a stranger’s bed. Snow was falling.

Strangely enough, I didn’t panic like most people would have. I kind of sat up and stared at the room and the white Polaroid littered walls (they were bare before from what I remembered). 5SOS’s song Amnesia played, a melancholy tune ringing throughout the room. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and reached for my phone. Instinctively, I checked my notes, scrolling down to find a list of note entries all dated and categorized into months until I hit the bottom of the list.

AY READ THIS FIRST U HOEBAGEL!!!1!!!!!!   

It was obvious the abundance of exclamation marks and emojis were tailored for the purpose of catching my attention. Acknowledging the last entry’s success, I opened it to read.

The words looked familiar, like I’ve read this hundreds of times. It was those words that brought to my attention, the fact that I had AFA and all the other details that came with it. Amnesia continued to play. I choked out a laugh when I realized that I literally woke with amnesia.

I was reading the January entries ( a compilation of unsurprisingly, lots of taco eating and sitting on the couch) when Mom came in the room, sitting down next to me.  

“Hey.” She whispered hoarsely. She smiled weakly and her eyes crinkled at the sides. She looked tired. “It’s January 25.” She pointed to the LED display of the date on the alarm clock.

“Yeah.” I said, looking out at the window. “I have a bad memory. I could’ve sworn it was July 16 yesterday.” Sunlight streamed from the window into the room. She let out a shaky breath, chuckling sadly. “London. That was a horrible joke.”

“I know.” The song repeated again.

“I still don’t understand why that song is your alarm.” She said, shaking her head at the sad guitar music. She stood up to turn the sound off. “They sing about wishing to wake up with amnesia and my own teenage daughter that actually does wake up with amnesia sets it as her alarm tone when she doesn’t wish to wake up with amnesia.”

I shrugged.

“I like paradoxes.” I told her. She rolled her eyes but her mood seemed to lighten a bit and she looked a lot less tired. Less sad.

“Okay, whatever. Do you want tacos for breakfast?”