The rain that fell because of you

1. I was standing in the rain when I received the news. It seemed fitting to me, that the sky was falling. I had originally gone outside to appreciate the rain that had taken its time leaving the sky. I wasn’t sure how to react to the sudden information. The only thing I was able to grasp was the fact that everything about me was shattered. My life would never return to what it was just an hour earlier.  
2. It was snowing that night. It started slowly despite being cold all day. It must have already settled on the ground in the minutes I started the long drive home. So I didn’t see the ice patch that pulled me off the road. 

1. I didn’t get to see you one last time. 
2. I don’t know how I survived. 

1. I let the rain soak me as I stood there. I don’t know if my mind was working. I don’t know if I was using thoughts. Moving seemed very irrelevant and unnecessary to me. Somehow, I picked up my legs and moved them inside. In the minutes and hours that passed, I stopped accounting for the time that passed around me. 
2. I was upside down several times I think. I was right-side up and sideways too, considering the fact that my car rolled probably a thousand times before it stopped. 

1. I woke up in a hospital. I think. I woke up feeling heavy, and it was very hard to breathe. I opened my eyes. It was harder than I thought. My sister was asleep in a chair. My arm was in a cast. There was an IV pouch hanging to the left of me. Of course. That’s probably a hospital essential, having an IV for every patient. Hydration is important. 
2. When I woke up, I was in a hospital. It took me a couple of minutes after coming to consciousness to reach this conclusion, but I was sure. The silence was punctuated routinely with sterile beeps, and the air seemed to hang heavy with emotions. I lay there for a while, gathering my strength. Then I opened my eyes. My arm was in a cast, my hand was bandaged. And something was missing. 

1. I was being released. The doctor assigned me to a check-up in two weeks. My cast could come off soon if I was careful with it. I needed to be monitored closely. All of this was said to my mother. I lay absently, blinking in time with the ticking clock.
2. My mother and sister stayed with me after I woke up, and longer still when my release date was pushed back. The doctors had said something about memory loss and brain trauma. When I was finally sent home, the doctor requested that I come in for a check-up every two weeks and to be careful with my arm so it could finish healing. I must have broken it in the accident. I don’t remember. 

1. It took me a long time to learn how to live without you.
2. I wasn’t able to drive alone for a long time after that night. 

1. Seeing. Thinking. Breathing. Speaking. All actions, each harder than the previous. Actions I couldn’t do. You were everywhere in my mind and I was afraid if I moved, you’d disappear. I woke up each morning with the memory of you crushing my lungs. I felt and felt and felt. I’d lost you. I’d lost. 
2. It was hard. Very hard at first. I wasn’t sure how to move forward. It was just an accident. It wasn’t my fault, and it was no one else's. I drove in the snow and rolled my car. I broke my arm and the broken window glass had made a new home in my hand. I hit my head on the steering wheel and received a concussion. I’d temporarily lost some memories. But it was harder than all that. I struggled to keep up with my mind. I struggled to understand. I struggled to feel anything. 

1. It would be easier if I didn’t know what I was missing. It would be easier. It’s worse knowing. It’s worse knowing you are never coming back.
2. The doctors said I was fine. They checked me and took off my cast. They said everything would go back to normal in a couple weeks. They said I could drive once my concussion was gone, and that I just needed some time to re-orient myself. 

-10 months later-

  It was raining. It hadn’t rained in a long time. In nearly a year. The rain smelled like earth and wood. It carried something heavy with it. Something silent. I went outside to find it. What was secret? 

I feel and feel and feel. 

I’d forgotten. 

I’d forgotten it all and it tore its way through me. 

Memories of someone who had been by my side. Someone who I didn’t have anymore. I’d been heavy before and I’d weighed a million pounds. I’d been so lost, so confused. What was holding me back? 

But I’d remembered. I remembered the last time it rained. The rain that fell because of you.  

I'm sitting in a monochrome room with the most interesting thing being the chipped paint on the roof. It’s easier to stare at the wall than hold eye contact with the man in front of me. It’s hard to accept what he’s saying. I’d suspected, for some time now, but to have it confirmed was completely different. I don’t understand entirely, but I guess I’m not supposed to. 

At least not yet.

I came to him with a million questions. What is happening with my memory? Why am I struggling to function normally despite having healed months ago? What am I missing?

He listened quietly at first, then gave his answers. 

I have a parallel memory. I suffered a traumatic event 10 months ago and have yet to begin the recovery process. The accident I remember is not what happened, only a fabricated version of it. My mind was not able to handle it at the time so created a replacement. But now my memories are fighting to stay. 

The doctor says the true memory has to reveal itself without any external influence, or my mind could go back into shock.

I remember. 

I remember you. 

I remember when I lost you. 

And how it felt. 

And here’s what really happened. 

My best friend died. 

He was in a car accident on his way to see me. 

It had been raining hard and he’d hydroplaned. 

The car had rolled a hundred million times.

There was no one to save him. 

The crushed car was spotted hours later.

I had no idea. 

I’d been struggling that day. 

I’d called him and asked for his company. 

He had always been there. He’d been there for so many years. 

The hospital had nothing to offer. 

They told me of his death with a finality that cut through me. 

I had waited all night for him.

But he was never going to come.

I must have stood out in the rain for some time because when I finally shuffled inside, I was clammy and shivery. 

But I’d stopped thinking long before that.

My mind had never been a safe place, but my best friend made it easier. Every time I’d tripped, fallen, or lain completely immobile, he had found a way to bring me back into the world. 

I needed him.

And I knew that.

Yet he’d been ripped away.

It was my Mother who had finally found me.

She saw the hole in the wall and the shattered coffee table.

The pieces of glass from the plates in the kitchen.

I was the center and source of the mess.

I don't remember any other this.

I only know of it as a story told to me when I was ready to hear it.

She and my sister took me away. And they stayed with me until I was released.

I eventually “recovered" at least physically.

I didn't feel anything for a long time.

I couldn’t handle reality in the end. 

So I created a new one. 

I chalked up the gaps in my story to concussion-induced memory loss.

One where I had been the one in the accident, but instead of dying I came away with only a few injuries. A reality where my best friend was excluded. One where I didn’t have to miss him.

Until recently, that was how I was content to exist.

Exist. Not live.

I hadn't been ready yet to live without him.

Still, my memories from his accident won. He’d been too important to me to cut out permanently.

The reality I had forged didn't hold up against the trauma of his death. There was no way to explain the emotions I battled or why I was unable to function as a healthy person. I struggled to wake up every day and didn't know why. I had covered up my memories with a bandaid that could do nothing to stop the bleeding.

Some part of me had always known what was real, and never stopped fighting to remember.