“Well, I don’t know you like this. And I think I’ve gotten to know you a little over the past four days—”
“No! What you got to know was not me! You got to know some strange, amnesiac version of me. Maybe I was a little mad this last week. I’d just lost my memory, clearly. I wasn’t myself. Clearly something came over me and I was acting out. Making stuff up. Playing some fantastical game of pretend in my empty head. And that’s who you think you know. That person. Some fictitious, make-believe version of myself that isn’t real. It was all imaginary. It was made up!” I was rambling, jumping from thought to thought. It was a strange feeling to suddenly have so many thoughts in my head, but I did, and they filled my head up until it felt like it might explode.
“No.” He continued to shake his head.
“What are you not getting about this, Noah?” I snapped, and the sound of my voice and tone shocked me as much as I could see it had shocked him. I could see it in the way his face contorted and the way his body began to lean back, away from me. A part of me wanted to reach back out and pull him closer, but this other part of me told me to push him away. And that part was so much stronger than the part that wanted to pull him closer. And although I didn’t have any memories yet, this feeling of pushing someone away felt very familiar. So I did it. I stood up and loomed over him.
“Noah, you don’t know me. At all.” I put my hands on my hips.
Noah stood up too. “That’s where you’re wrong.”
“I’m not wrong,” I snapped.
“Okay, fair enough. Let’s say you are this person.” He waved his hands around the room. “Where does it say that you have to continue being this person?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, clearly, you don’t like this version of yourself. So change it. Be the person you were this last week. Isn’t that what Andi said in the cards, anyway? A journey, a new way of life, leaving behind and ridding yourself of a relationship, belief or behavioral pattern that is no longer good for you.”
I laughed. “And you’re going to listen to some psychic pharmacist who gave me a card reading on top of a shelf of sanitary wear?” These words came out sounding so much harsher than I imagined they would, and they took me by surprise. No! This was the most ludicrous, naïve thing I’d ever heard. I rolled my eyes at him. “Noah, I’m almost thirty years old. Clearly this is who I am, and have been forever. And now I must just change it? Swish a magic wand and change everything about who I am? That’s . . . it’s . . . impossible. It’s ridiculous. Stupid.”
I saw Noah take a step back from me. “I’m changing who I am. I’m changing my career. I’m starting something new. Is that stupid? Ridiculous?”
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“How did you mean it?” he asked.
“I . . . I . . .” I stuttered, feeling so out of my depth right now. So uncomfortable. Teetering on something thin that I could fall off at any second.
Pull or push?
Two different sides to this thing I was standing on. Each side totally different. Each side totally opposed.
Pull or push?
I took a deep breath. Perhaps the deepest I’d ever taken in all the time I’d had a memory of breathing.
“Noah, thank you for everything you’ve done for me this last week. I will always be grateful for what you did. For saving my life. For taking care of me when I couldn’t . . .” I stopped.
“Why does that sound like a goodbye?” he asked, his eyes widening.
I hung my head, unable to look into those eyes of his.
“Because it is,” I whispered. “I want you to go now.”
There was a long pause, and I heard Noah take a breath too. Also long like mine, inhaling and then exhaling. I felt him letting go of something on that exhale. Something that made me want to cry.
“I’m glad I could help,” he finally said, and then I heard his footsteps to the door.
Pull or push?
“I wish you all the best, Zoe.”
“Zen,” I quickly corrected. “My name is Zen.”
Another pause, then I heard him open the door and, before he walked out and closed it, I heard him murmur something, almost under his breath.
“Goodbye, Zoe.”
