Hey,
Hi, I’m Michelle/aka Feisty: a lifelong wanderer, storyteller and bipolar author.
I’m also an amnesiac; I live with both retrograde and antegrade amnesia.
Read on.
I was born with hemochromatosis, which is a genetic mutation of the HFE gene. This mutation is believed to have originated in Ireland and is linked to the body’s inefficient regulation of iron absorption.
Iron overload caused my gall bladder to rupture, requiring emergency surgery for organ removal.
When I woke up from anesthesia and I didn’t know who I was. Where I was. Who the people in the hospital room were. But even though I had trouble remembering and recognizing these people, I felt safe with them. As I type that now I remember how terrifyingly vulnerable I was, and at this moment it still gives me a tangible shock.
After the surgery I quickly realized that living independently was impossible. The doctors had revoked my license to drive, which I understood. But I could’t rely on friends for transportation indefinitely. I couldn’t stay on friend’s couches forever, but I had no safe place to go.
During this time I had nothing to cling to. I had no-one to talk with about my backstory. But I discovered that I’d d been keeping diaries since childhood. And I’d published three romance novels. As I started delving into decades of my own life stories, writing became a lifeline as I sought to piece together fragments of 4 decades of existence.
Through my words, I stumbled upon unsettling accounts of reckless behavior, feelings of profound loneliness, and raw reflections on my mother, who passed away from a brain tumor when I was seventeen.
I started to relive my life, from when I was a child. Having my mother’s big collection of letters, to and from her mother, I immersed myself in these bits of communication. And because there was so much writing—both handwritten and typed— I started realizing that I was re-experiencing many parts of my young life that I’d forgotten even before amnesia.
The only life I knew was the life I’d started to obsessively read, over and over my own narrations of my entire life.
But none of that helped me even think about what I needed to do with my life now.
I had a lifelong friend who lived in Texas. David drove to get me on the west coast and he moved me into this place in the middle of the country. Safe.
Now: I write. I knit. I snuggle with my dog, Mr. Darcy. This site serves as a platform for sharing my experiences and insights about living with amnesia.
