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Post-Modern Drunk: Memories
The night I got into the ICU was the weirdest. There were worse nights in the hospital, but that was the weirdest. After my girlfriend went home after a grueling day in the emergency room, which included a spinal tap, some tests, a couple IVs, and my having a tube literally pounded into my chest, I got into the ICU. I don't know what drugs I was on, by that point, but I think you could probably take a few of them recreationally and have a pretty decent evening if you managed not to claw your eyes out.
The curtains in my room in the ICU were patterned, with swirls and ovals and shit on them. After a couple minutes in the ICU, I started to see text scrolling on them. Paragraphs of text, my most intimate thoughts and dreams and hopes, started to spill itself out on the walls. I became convinced that I had to write everything down, otherwise I'd lose it forever. I saw novels and stories and all my relationships and all my potential posts and everything just cover the walls, and I knew that a lifetime of creative work was spilling out there. I thought of Coleridge, writing "Kubla Khan" and being interrupted by the Man from Porlock.
I had no paper. I had no pen. I had no strength to hold them anyway, or even to ask for them.
It all passed me by, and I remember the experience, but I don't remember anything that scrolled by me.
It's been nine months since that day, and the more time passes, the more I realize that I've lost a lot of my memories. I don't remember the vast majority of my early hospital stay, or my illness, or things from that era, but other things are gone as well. My Junior High friends. Significant portions of my college experience. Entire cities I went to in Europe. Books I've read. The names of my coworkers. The name of the first person I slept with in New York City. Significant and insignificant details, all lost.
I don't think that my memories literally vacated themselves onto the walls of the ICU, but it's hard not to feel that, sometimes.
