I told her the same story as yesterday. Verbatim.
She did not. Not even close.
I went to meet her, but she wasn’t there. I waited for one hour. I came home.
She was fifteen minutes late, waited for five in the lobby without announcing her presence, and then drove away without looking back.
Why do I suddenly need an alibi? She’s not my mother, she’s not my family, she’s not even my friend.
She thinks she’s off the hook. That she can distance herself, but she’s never been very good at that in the end.
Look. I’ll tell her the next time I see her, ok? I was going to tell her anyway, sheesh.
She might not even remember the story by then. It is a tricky story, truth be told, but not the same one as she told before. She had dumbed it down and changed important details.
I guess it couldn’t hurt. I could go back tomorrow. It’s not like her office is going anywhere. And I haven’t forgotten how to drive. I haven’t forgotten that. Yes, I guess I am talking to myself again. Stay out of it.
She is doing it again. She needs to go in tomorrow, with or without an appointment. Because the medication stopped working weeks ago.
I don’t even know why I have to take these stupid pills, that make me forget things. Forget my own stories. Replace them with other peoples’. People I don’t even know. People who don’t even know me. But somehow, their stories are more important than mine? How does that work, anyway?
She truly doesn’t know. They are all her stories. Every voice in her head and beyond. They will always be only her stories.
I guess I’ll make some new ones then. Stories I can call my own. And I’ll tell them to her as if I just found them and they do not much matter. And I will make them easy to repeat, normal. Safe. And maybe…
She’s rebooted. And now the stories will change, but it was never really about the stories. That’s what she can’t understand, it’s about the narrator.