Every Day, Amnesia In The Morning

I wake up every morning and realize I'm alive. I find myself on a sofa in a living room. I stare at my hands and think about how they still work. Sometimes I can't control my emotions, and my mind feels like a storm of conflicting feelings. It's hard to make sense of these emotions, and some days are tougher than others.

My phone tells me it's Saturday, and as I wake up, I try to piece together where I am. The bright room with too many windows and empty glasses makes me think I'm not at home. I live with two roommates, one of whom is my eleven-year-old son. I struggle to remember where I am and the people around me. I often wake up feeling confused and in pain.

I have been living with my best friend, Louise, for over a year, but I struggle to remember our history clearly. I've distanced myself from the outside world and find it hard to leave the house. I often struggle with the memories of my past, because the occasions are, more often than not, memories that are disturbing. Before, I'd blocked out so much of my earlier years. But now those recollections are back, and much more detailed than before.

I recall an experience of getting my clit piercing, and it reminds me of other occasions when I altered my body and appearance. I find myself walking outside, aimlessly, and sometimes-to a liquor store. After the surgery, my license was taken away. Past events that happened in the past battle inside my skull. Memories aren't the same anymore.

Neuropsychologist Diagnoses

During one of my recentish stays at Baylor Hospital a social worker came to my room. This isn’t unusual. What was unusual was that she came to me to tell me that I qualify for mental disability. The social worker told me I qualify for disability because it can help me access basic health care. It can also help me pay for medical care to deal with my increasingly problematic pancreas. She has already set up an appointment for me at the psychiatry clinic in Parkland.

I qualify for mental disability because I have documented medical records that show I have severe atrophy. Brain damage. People with cerebral atrophy, lose brain cells (neurons), which causes connections between their brain cells. Brain volume decreases. This loss of brain volume can lead to problems with thinking, memory, functioning, and —

The greater the loss, the more brain is fucked. This is a phrase that plays on an infinite loop inside my skull. Every time I look for some item I put somewhere I put myself down for being such an idiot. Then I remember that my brain is fucked. But. Life will go on. And I'll forget that.

Anyway. Back to Saint Mary’s. Anesthetics activate memory-loss receptors in the brain, ensuring that folks don’t remember what happens during surgery. The activity of memory loss receptors remains high long after the drugs have left the patient’s system, sometimes for days, sometimes longer. We all be unique. Oh! More fun. I almost forgot — get it?? I almost forgot??? Awhile ago I was hospitalized for hepatic encephalopathy, which is a brain disorder that happens when the liver is fucked.

Loss of brain ability occurs when the liver can't remove toxins from the blood. This is called hepatic encephalopathy (HE). This problem occurs suddenly or it develop slowly over time.

The cause for my high ammonia levels in my body was from iron buildup in my liver. (Also, I have hep C and hemochromatosis.)

Hemochromatosis is a disease that’s easy to keep tolerable. The main treatment is phlebotomy to remove iron, through blood. But, this easily accessible treatment is only easily accessible to people with health coverage. I am not one of those people. Ergo, my body is failing from iron overload and is trying to poison me in myriad ways.

The hepatic encephalopathy incident was so scary I remember a lot of it. Like being literally chained to a hospital bed so I get ammonia drained, and…meds pumped in. I was so fucking fucked in the motherfucking head at this point—I refused to stay in bed. So the big guns—aka needles—were brought to fight the battle to fight the battle with ammonia brain. Anyhow. I’m mental. Je suis officiellement fou. And I was scared.

So I’m going to knit. A lot. And think about being officially mental. Mentally disabled. But hey. Balls to the walls, ammiright?

My Name's Michelle And I'm Not An Alcoholic.

Vodka wasn’t always how I coped. I didn’t start using alcohol to deal with all my mental and physical shit until I was in my late 30s. My marriage was with an abusive person. And hemochromatosis made it feel worse.

Hemochromatosis is a Hemochromatosis is an iron disorder in which the body simply loads too much iron. This action is genetic and the excess iron, if left untreated, can damage joints, organs, and eventually be fatal.

Hemochromatosis is an ailment for which testing is not consistently done. Meanwhile this DNA mutation causes a bunch of shit, so we're just living with a disease that causes:

• Cirrhosis (liver damage)
• Heart problems
• Arthritis (joint pain)
• Diabetes
• Gallbladder disorders, such as mine. My gallbladder ruptured because of iron overload.

Many women don’t get diagnosed until after menopause, since that’s when our natural blood loss stops. Most doctors I’ve talked with don’t know much about HFE. A recent study found that only about 1 in 100 people in the U.S. are correctly diagnosed with this condition, even though it can be very serious.

The short story is that this disease affects a person's head and heart. It also affects the liver, spleen, pancreas, and gall bladder. It was the rupture of my gallbladder that led to the surgery that left me mentally fucked. 

Nobody looks for hemochromatosis here. By the time anyone notices, it’s already too late. When my brain felt broken, a drink is the only thing that makes sense.

After the summer of 2017, I forgot who I was, and people kept telling me I was an alcoholic. I couldn’t remember anything else about who I was, and I literally prayed every day that I would die, so drinking quickly became an innate part of what was left of whatever I’d been.

By the end of that first year, fear took over. I didn’t want to feel anything or care. I was completely alone. I had no one, no family, no money, no memory, no car, no license, and no home.

Alcohol was the only thing that felt like home. I thought about drinking myself into the ground, and I didn’t mind. I wasn’t a mother, or a writer, or a wife. I was just a ghost with a broken brain. Life kept moving, but I was gone.

Most of my friends who worried about my drinking really cared about me. But none of that made sense. I still needed notes so knew where I was when I woke up.

Michelle, Feisty, whoever I was. Nothing seemed real. My brain was gone. Words didn’t stick. All I had was the feeling of abandonment, moving through the world like a half-dead thing.

Later, after those lost years, I found myself in a sterile hospital room in Dallas, in a semi-coma due to hepatic encephalopathy from ammonia poisoning. 

The sharp, clean, antiseptic smell hovered in the air, mingling with the constant rhythmic beep of the heart screen beside me. This was the moment where my life turned; the faint sound of the screen was like a lifeline, pulling me back from the precipice I hadn't realized I was teetering on. I knew I did not want to be back in some sterile hospital room with all the highpitched beep beep beeps pumelling my inner ears.

At some indecipherable time after the hepatic encephalopathy coma, someone called just to say hi and see how I was doing. By then, I’d been on heart drugs for a while. I called one of my dearest friends to this person that since I’d been taking meds for my erratic heart, I’d been a lot more... calm. I hadn’t been craving xanax and vodka, which, for me, had become an increasingly constant and overwhelming want.

At some indecipherable time after the hepatic encephalopathy coma, someone called just to say hi and see how I was doing. By then, I’d been on heart drugs for a while. I called one of my dearest friends to this person that since I’d been taking meds for my erratic heart, I’d been a lot more... calm. I hadn’t been craving xanax and vodka, which, for me, had become an increasingly constant and overwhelming want.

After that conversation something finally clicked for me. One night I went to sleep and woke up knowing that I wasn’t going to drink anymore. 

And I didn’t.

My name is Michelle, and I’m Feisty. I’m a little crazy, a bad ukulele player, and I’m not an alcoholic.

That’s why I haven’t touched a drink in seven years.

A white mug with bold black text that reads "I POURED MYSELF A CUP OF AMBITION" sits on a wooden surface, with blurred windows and brushes in the background.

Amnesia and Mental Health

I feel like I’m breathing through dirt and shards of pain, and that’s all there is. I don’t think I’ve truly given up, but it all feels like bullshit. How many times have I tried to take my own life? Many. And I was terrible at even that. 

I need a hug, a real connection with someone I love and trust. I want to feel safe and escape this lonely skeleton hole I claim as my body. I’m on so many medications, mostly for my brain, but I don’t know if they’re helping. If they are, I can't tell because my sense of self is reflected in the disorderly chapters reading to themselves, inside my cerebrum.

This headspace makes it hard to write because I’m afraid to open that wound in my mind-that now feels like a dangerous place to explore. When I was 20 I hopped on a plane that landed in Prague. That was really scary—it was so much frightening then my first trip overseas. In Prague it snowed; I’d never been that cold before. 

Recently I’ve been traveling to Barcelona, I often go to Spain. This is the writing I get lost in—the memories and all the hurt. And many nostalgic memories. 

A woman with red hair and tattoos, wearing a black dress and pink sandals, smiles as she swings on a rope swing under a large tree in a natural, wooded area.

Judgement From The Mountains

A young woman with wavy, light brown hair smiles at the camera. She is wearing a feather earring, a black top, and layered necklaces with heart pendants. The background is a plain, dark studio backdrop.

Today. I've been here before. Some of the staff know me. I don't know them. I don't know myself. A few months ago, in April, I had surgery. That surgery was performed at this hospital. They took out my gall bladder. I don't miss it. What I miss is my memory, which was also removed during that surgery. I remember being in my thirties, kinda. I am now forty-three.

It's okay to be judgmental. However, it is only acceptable to be judgmental toward people who are deemed to have problems with things like drinking. This includes other habits that people give up on Mondays and January First. Like eating.

When it comes to surreptitiousness, judgment, and, most of all, help, eating disorders are still hidden. Justified. Pitied. Ignored. Everybody eats.

"Hello?" The soft voice comes through the brown door, with the thudded sound of knuckles tapping wood, three times. The silver industrial handle has no lock, and it rests a tad too far to the right. In Saint Mary's Hospital, everything is crooked.

When I hear the knocks, I'm reading Facebook. People have such pretty lives.

It is the voice of a doctor. The doctors have different voices from the nurses, and the doctors always open the door as they say my name. Nurses knock, then walk in softly.

"Michelle?" The door opens.

I am on day eight in Saint Mary's. Reno. I know this hospital is called St. Mary's. I look out my window, down four floors and to the right. I see the neon LED sign spanning the entrance to the emergency room. Saint Mary's, in a bright, glowing red. I am in room 407. That's me. 407.

I know I'm a writer, but all I can read is music. And now I sing. I sing a lot, and I write music. When I hear myself sing, I remember that my voice sucks.

My current stay is based on a seizure, the result of alcohol withdrawal. I know this is can only partly be true. I drank a couple of shots of vodka. It was less than twelve hours before the violent seizure that led me here. The seizure that took place while I was attending an AA meeting. I only went to the meeting so I could honestly say I did. Some people have no clue about what they're judging. I know AA very well. My father and two of his brothers preached about it for decades, until they died from overusing alcohol and heroin.

I've heard the nurse explain 407 to other nurses. This happens when a new nurse takes a night or morning shift. I hear these conversations, as they take place, usually, a few feet from where I'm staring at the ceiling from my hospital bed. At St. Mary's. What has struck me as interesting, repeatedly, is that I swear all of these conversations have taken place in Spanish. They haven't. But they have. I don't speak Spanish.

It's The Little Things

My Amnesia Battle: Anterograde Vs. Retrograde

My memories are shrapnel and bloody bits of flesh and jagged pieces of time.

Dirty smoky air, which I breath. Pieces of parts of things. Of people. Blood, streaming onto and into the sharp, steaming shrapnel. I see familiar images --memories deteriorating on the ground.

I am my own world. My spinning world of love and grief and memories. My world of my words. My world of my worlds. My ether, with floating, evolving, melting snowflakes.

At first, it’s a party. People come over. They bring food and flowers and booze. They clean. They cook. How are you? They ask, because they truthfully want to know. They bring books and ask you to go on walks. They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life.

The memorial is the last phase of people gifting you their time. They must get back to their lives. They must get back to the people in their lives. Friends visit only on weekends. The phone rings less. The walks get shorter and scarcer. The carefully wrapped casseroles stop appearing in the kitchen. The flowers start to wilt, dripping their leaves on the tabletop. Like snowflakes and people — flowers melt.

How are you doing? The soft voices that asked the caring questions start to evolve in tone, speed, intonation. And topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life. The lives of the living.

But I can't, I don't, return to my life because my life isn’t there anymore. And never will be again. Guernica.

My friends go out for dinners and take day trips to lakes. They eat at home or at the home of friends. They return to their worlds. Silence now permeates what used to be our home. My house is now empty of noise because it is now missing my favorite sound. Now nothing seems right.

Now. For whom do I cook? Who do I cook with? How do I comfort others? How do I adjust to a new life without that person’s existence? In the beginning, there is disbelief and shock. The phone becomes a cold thing. It no longer brings me silly messages from the now dead person. I start feeling more emotions. These emotions slowly start to fade. This happens as I adjust to what’s missing from my life every fucking day.

Then — then things start seeming kinda normal. I notice that the world is continuing. I cry less. I lol. I listen to a podcast. I eat breakfast.

Life goes on and so do I.

I no longer have shock or disbelief to numb me. I no longer have the fresh, bloody cuts to bandage. All I have are what’s bleeding under my severed arteries and punctured organs and smokey images.

Memories. Trees and babies and so much beautiful food. Love. Hate. Sadness.

So many faded, deteriorating, decomposing images Last century’s photographs, drifting and joining and melting.

I know that I’ll remember all of the things again — and again. But my memories won’t be exactly the same. Our memories change, for the better, just a little bit every time we remember them. Our memories are protein.

I knit and I knit. A scarf for Darlene. Darlene will smile. I’ll feel her smile in the yarn coming alive in my hands. I’m

I’ve started knitting

My friends go out for dinners and take day trips to lakes and my friends eat at their homes. The homes of other people. They return to their worlds. My world is too fucking quiet. And that makes my brain a smokey battlefield of memories.

SAFETY IS AN OBSERVATION

I want to see flowers. I want to feel warm water. I want to feel waves melting around around my body. I feel stupid. I feel smart. Do I feel smart because I'm so fucking stupid? Feelings are supposed to be shown, not told, when writing. Show don't tell. I want to feel happy. I want to eat. I want to know. I want my hair to not fall out. I need a break. I need a brain. I want a break that lasts me the rest of my life and beyond.

I don't want to be standing on the gymnastics floor, eight years old, with my gymnastics teacher, Wayne, behind me. Gently reaching around to push his hands down the front of my shorts. I told my mom.

She stared at me.

I want my hair back. I want my life back. I want a sandwich. I want ice-cream. I want to eat with love. With people I love. And who love me. I want to sleep. Forever. I want to live happily. Indefinitely. I want to hold my newborn son, every one of these days. I want to be in love and mean it. I want to hide in a lake. I want to hide with fish. I want to write about people who exist, and who are good. Instead I'm swimming fiercely in rocky, murky water. My legs are drumsticks. My legs beat beat beat. The wood, shattering on the wet, sharp rocks. I taste blood. I remember the metallic, plastic, blasting—the sound of my typewriter smashing cement after I threw it over my second-floor balcony. Little brown buttons with letters in a dark courier font splattered the ground. H and I, two stated.

Whenever I find myself in the hospital room, standing next to the bed on which is resting my dead mother, in indecipherable spans of time, I am looking out the window. It is Summer Solstice, which means I am nearly exactly 17.5 years old. I am staring at the white blinds, which are slanted open, and I look through countless strips of plastic, I am looking at the sky. The sky is blue. Above the top of the concrete roof of the fifth floor of the other wing of The Hospital, the sky is blue. It's that clear, clear, clear, clean, windex blue. The kind of blue that only happens for a little bit of time, on days with a slight breeze, and little pollution. Danny and I--Danny Lee Clark Junior (he's dead now, too) and I--had left the trailer in San Jose, after the call came, around 7:30 a.m. Now, it was around 9:30. It wasn't yet 10:00. The light would be less clear at 10:00. It would start to look hot. And it was, after all, June. June 14th. 1990. I look at my mother. I look at her. She looks peaceful. I'd never seen her look so peaceful. Ever. The bandage wrapped around the top of her head was neat, and clean, and white. It only covered the top of her eyebrows.  I would not--did not--think about the bloody wound hiding beneath the clean, white dressing. It was all dead. She was dead.  Standing on my balcony, in Reno, I watched the explosion.

When the typewriter hit the concrete, the black ribbon spool still pressed against paper. After the ancient typing machine crashed onto the ground, I remember brown leaves drifting around my brown typewriter, like ballerinas, floating in the blasted air. Today, now, I want to see the brown leaves drifting across the scuffled concr ete of my patio. I want to look between the brown patio steps and see the ground. I want to hear the shuffling sound of shoes as people walk on the other side of the fence, unaware of what they're missing over here.

What I want to be is home. I want to be cooking paella on my stove, in our house, that I toured with Jay with a real estate agent. I want to be standing in our kitchen, in front of the counter, chopping vegetables on the countertop that I designed. I want to boil water on the stove that I, after much research, had installed. Our 5-year-old son watches something silly on the tv with J, who is sitting on the long sofa, a shot-glass of to-be-sipped-slowly tequila in his hand. They watch the green Bang & Olufsen television. I want to be there, at home, where I was--where I thought I was--safe. Safety is an observation.

Nothing Goes Away

Now, I’m an instant photograph—an undeveloped Polaroid, seeking light to reveal myself. I’m composed of layers of amnesia—retrograde, antegrade. Pieces of who I am or once was diffuse into the painstaking, slow development of images. I’m not really an amnesiac. I, Michelle Kathleen O’Kane, am a Time Traveler. An object.

An object in time travels if and only if the difference between its departure and arrival times, as measured in the surrounding world, does not equal the duration of the journey it undergoes. In this place, the soft grey shawl and my knitting project are on my Anthropologie quilted bed. The book on my nightstand is The Echo of Old Books. My notebook, with its pinkish pages, waits patiently for more words—words I will emote before talking incessantly about myself and everything that used to be my life.

There was a time when everything felt possible. I wrote stories I believed in, and imagined new places and the hope of falling in love.

Memories of sharing meals with people I loved. Mimosas at brunch. Cosmopolitans before dinner. Vintage chardonnay with dinner. I wake up while driving in various cars, and I’m always the driver. Frequently, I’m on the unpopulated northern lanes of Highway 280, approaching the 92 exchange. Aware. While I’m driving, I surround myself with the color-changing hills. I’m humming along with Elvis Costello. Every day I write the book.

Now I drive west, heading toward Half Moon Bay. Always in my own car. Today it’s my blue Ford Ranger, the one I bought after my mother died. I was seventeen. She had only been gone a few months.

I pass the Half Moon Bay Nursery on the north side of 92. I drive through the edges of my town. My ocean, the salt in the air, blue sky, and the sea. White clouds stretch across the sun and water. I realize now how strange I have become.

I haven’t watched a movie with anyone in more than five years. I haven’t laughed with someone in just as long. Sometimes, something on TV or the radio pulls a laugh out of me—a quick, sharp sound. It surprises me. I hardly recognize it as my own.

Time is on my side. Gravity nudges me across cool, damp grass. Behind me, a 5’4” wide trail marks where I’ve rolled down the hill.

I’m jealous of many of the things I see on TV. And Instagram. Landscapes and cities and people at tables with white espresso cups.

“You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.”—Margaret Atwood

Knitting, Purling & Amnesia

I am my world. My spinning world of love and grief and memories. The world of my words. The world of my worlds.

At first, it’s a party. People come over.  They bring food and flowers and booze. They clean. They cook.  "Hey there, how's everything going with you?" They ask because they truthfully want to know.  They carry books and ask you to go on walks.  They plan the memorial. They stay by your side on that day of celebration. Like a birthday party, a memorial celebrates a life. 

The memorial is the last phase of people gifting you their time. They must get back to their lives. They must get back to the people in their lives. Friends visit only on weekends. The phone rings less. The walks get shorter and scarcer. The carefully wrapped casseroles stop appearing in the kitchen. The flowers start to wilt, dripping their leaves on the tabletop.  

How are you doing?  The soft voices that ask the caring questions start to evolve in tone, speed, intonation. Topics. Conversations evolve into the talk of life. The lives of the living. 

But I can't, I do not return to my life because my life isn't there anymore. And never will be again. My lives. My worlds.

My friends go out for dinners. They take day trips to lakes. My friends eat at home or the home of friends. They return to their worlds. Silence now permeates what used to be our home. My house is now empty of noise because it is now missing my favorite sound. Now nothing seems right. 

Now. For whom do I cook?  Who do I cook with? How do I comfort others? How do I adjust to a new life without that person's existence? In the beginning—disbelief, shock. A phone that becomes a brick being held in my hand. A brick no longer brings me silly messages from the now-dead person. I start feeling more feelings. These are feelings that slowly start to whisper away. They fade as I acclimate to what's missing from my life. Missing from my life.

Then—then things start seeming kinda normal. I notice that the world is continuing. I cry less. I lol. I listen to a podcast. I eat breakfast. Then—when I'm kinda functioning without that constant feeling of emptiness, loss, grief—that is when the death hits me. I've returned to the normal headspace. 

Life goes on. So do I.

I no longer have shock or disbelief to numb me. I no longer have the fresh, bloody cuts to bandage. All I have are what's under the now scarred skin:  severed arteries and punctured organs and smokey images. Those things haven't started healing yet—and I know that the deepest cuts never will. 

 I knit.  A scarf for Darlene. A warm beanie for Marc.  

I stare at the fuzzy ball of yarn, next to me, on the sofa in my Studio. The soft, warm wool I'm gripping is the only reality I can touch. I’m navigating the unfamiliar terrain of amnesia. I am knitting together a semblance of connection, one stitch at a time.

Amnesia & Medical Visits

Disaster Girl. Ces't moi. If I recall correctly, I earned that nickname right after I shattered my tibfib during roller derby practice. Tahoe Derby Dames! Anyway.

So. On September 27th I was ordered to go the ER because I was anemic. This was a strange order because I've spent a lot of time with phlebotomists because I have hemochromatosis.

So I went. Had a bunch of scans. Gave blood, got blood. Went back home. And then, 6 hours later, the Parkland ER called me and ordered me to come back because of ACUTE PANCREATITIS. Again.

So then I went back to the Parkland ER. Got admitted. Was not allowed to leave the hospital for 8 more days. Etcetera.

As is common with lengthy hospital stays, I was attached to the bed through my hardworking IV pole. And a built-in bed alarm. Then, on my last couple of days, I was released from the alarm. YAY! I was able to, with IV pole in tow, go the bathroom all by myself.

Of course, on my way back from the bathroom, a wave of vertigo washed over me and I fell down. I crashed to the gross hospital floor—and brought the IV pole with me—yes, the heavy-as-rocks pole landed on me. (Yes, that is what she said.) It was a pretty nasty fall, which I know because of the gigantic bruise on my upper thigh.

Anyhoo. Just another day in Feisty Falls Down world.

A person with light skin and a blue floral tattoo rests their crossed arms on a hospital bed rail, perhaps after frequent medical visits. The scene suggests a medical setting, with small bruises or marks visible on the person's skin.

ABOUT TIME

Brain Damage, My Mom and Me

I Taste A Liquor Never Brewed

I've been thinking about when we delivered Flynn. I can still see the carpark from the hospital window. I remember the 4Runner you had when we met at NASA. Was it blue or yellow? I bought a yellow one later. It was a piece of shit, remember?

Your old blue duplex was just a few blocks from Kim's Vietnamese Restaurant. Your blue BMW motorcycle and black helmet sat in the small garage. Denise and Tom lived in Milpitas. Lynn and Larry had a green lawn with flowers across from the flute lady, where I took flute lessons.

Do you remember when we saw that flute teacher on our flight from Dublin to London? In London, we stayed on the second floor of a big B&B. We went downstairs for breakfast, and there was just one other person in the room. When we left, the hallway to the kitchen was on the left, and the large brown door to the street was on the right. We stepped outside, turned left, and walked down the road. It was my first time out of the country, so the walk felt amazing.

Sometimes, as I write, I think about our cottage in the Castro. We would step onto the patio. Behind us was the entrance to the two-story building. I wonder, did Freddy have a missing finger or just a big band-aid? Did he play guitar?

Still thinking about the Castro cottage: after leaving the big black iron gate, we would turn right and walk down to Castro Street. The theater was a block or two away, across the street. My mind drifts, and I expect to see the Mountain View ice-cream shop, the last one on the right, with railroad tracks across from it. I miss Kim’s and the lunch spots from NASA.

Sometimes I think I remember one of our living rooms, but then realize it’s just my old living room. It was in the tiny house where I grew up in Cupertino. I practiced flute near the front window. My mom was always in the garden, her hands covered in soil. I can picture the loveseat, the spot for the Christmas tree, and the little dining room. We even used it sometimes.

In Mountain View, the front door opened into the living room. There was a small dining area on the right and the kitchen straight ahead. The bathroom was to the right, the bedroom to the left, and the back door led straight to the small garage. Is that right?

Now, jumping to today: I woke up in Scotland. We're upstairs in a tavern or pub. It's around noon. We park in a dead-end alley, with the car on the right side of the street, facing the two-story building. We walk inside, turn right, and go up to the second floor. Inside, everything is wood—shiny, caramel-colored walls and a bar. The left side of the pub has windows, some with stained glass, flowers, a cross, and a pretty mosaic. Outside, the air is wet and gray. It feels like we are always walking through clouds.

Still in the Scottish pub, it's fun trying to order vegetarian food. We sit at a high table and climb onto shiny chairs. We read the chalkboard behind the bar. We're wandering through the highlands, with Cawdor Castle as our destination, maybe today or tomorrow. You order soup and a beer, and I have a cider and a salad. Later, I'll ask you to stop at a market so I can get some cookies.

A local asks where we're from and tells us his son is in New York, though he’s not sure why. He drops his shoulders and laughs, and we laugh too. Scots have big smiles and laughs, so it never feels gloomy here. We haven’t been invited to the Scottish boy's birthday yet—that comes later. We’ll see a young man carried in a chair while friends and family wave pound notes.

I've been coping better in unfamiliar places. Jay made this possible, even if he didn’t mean to. I never feel unsafe with him. He’s confident, and he’s always been the smartest person I know. It took time to realize I was safe with him. That feeling grew and let me take risks. Taking risks with Jay made me start living.

Time shifts again: I fall asleep and want to travel more. I want to go back to that narrow, scary Scottish road that seemed to twist forever. But I woke up in Hawaii instead. That’s okay. I love waking up there, especially in Kauai. It wasn’t our honeymoon, but the time we stayed near the North Shore. We drove a red rental car to a roadside spot with a red arrow, parked, and hiked through mud and trees to a beach. We swam and watched fish in the warm sea. Every time, the warmth amazed me—I never knew an ocean could be so warm. Not Half Moon Bay, not Trinidad, not Cannon Beach. Those were the only oceans I knew before Jay. "Be careful. Watch out for jellyfish."

Another place, another morning: I woke up in my art gallery. I loved that place. Jay came by to set something up on my computer. I had been browsing the DWR catalog, hoping to buy Jay something cool to sit in—something beautiful, comfortable, and good for his back. I looked up the Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman. I knew he'd love it, but he would never buy it for himself.
Moments later, I’m somewhere else. I was sipping a cranberry martini Jay made as I started waking up. In this room. Dallas.

I slammed myself into the hospital bed. Jay is holding my hand. I am pushing Flynn out of my body, with no pain relief. Jay keeps telling me I can do it. You can do it. So I do. That was January 7, 2005. I never wanted to believe all the things I knew were true about me, things I thought were only for other people. I’m a piece of shit. And I’m insane. It’s right there in my medical records. Today, I’ve wished many times I could rewrite my story. It’s unfair that I inherited a disease. It didn’t show up until I’d already thrown everything away. I even lost myself. Now, I see a life—my life—that hasn’t stopped just because I’m no longer in it. Every day, I wake up all over the world. I think about how to stop the constant waking up. So far, nothing has worked. The other day, I woke up in Ireland. We’d just hit a cow. Then I went to sleep in Dallas, by myself, knowing the biggest memory loss I have is that I’m hardly a memory for anyone anymore. I hope that soon I wake up in that little white villa in Andalusia. We drive to the convent on that five-foot wide, winding road. We ate those delicious chocolate treats the nuns made. Jay bought a flower from a nun and gave it to me. I hope I wake up here again soon. Spain. Warm. Health. Sangria.

Finally, I long for another place. I want to wake up in my Humboldt forest. I want to escape my small box with a bathroom. I want to crawl through fallen branches, under what used to be ferny canopies. I want to be drunk on liquor never brewed.

A silhouette of a face with intricate floral patterns, facing a hand holding a small flying figure. Text reads: “I taste a liquor never brewed – Emily Dickinson.”.

I taste a liquor never brewed (214)
Emily Dickinson
1830 –1886

I taste a liquor never brewed – 
From Tankards scooped in Pearl – 
Not all the Frankfort Berries
Yield such an Alcohol!

Inebriate of air – am I – 
And Debauchee of Dew – 
Reeling – thro' endless summer days – 
From inns of molten Blue – 

When "Landlords" turn the drunken Bee
Out of the Foxglove's door – 
When Butterflies – renounce their "drams" – 
I shall but drink the more!

Till Seraphs swing their snowy Hats – 
And Saints – to windows run – 
To see the little Tippler
Leaning against the – Sun!

My Life With Death: Suicide & Survival

I was never great at problem-solving.

What do you do when you've lived your life and survived? Do you get a pistol and kill yourself? Do you shoot yourself in the head? If so, how do you do it? Point at your temple? Or do you shove the gun to the back of your throat, pointed up to get a good shot, to do the deed, seal the deal? 

Your arms are not long enough to hold a shotgun. Also, you don't own a shotgun.

There are many variables in something you've seen perfectly executed thousands of times, in films. In movies, most of the time, when people get killed, they get killed with a bullet. Pills are for the wealthy. And people with health insurance.

You have bleach, a box of razor blades you bought twenty years ago, at Flax, and a very sharp chef's knife. But the knife was a birthday gift, so it seems disrespectful to use it to slit your wrists. Plus, wrist slitting seems like a serious challenge, and you've never been good with details.

It's a method of problem-solving. It's a process of a set of rules. It's Wikipedia. They trick you. They teach you how to multiply numbers. They tell you that x=0. But they never call it a language or reveal that zero means nothing. Except for a vertical line.

What you want to do is: put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger. Die in the bathtub, or maybe a field of gravel. Surrounded by blood: trickling, splattering, dripping. Sticky hair, messy. But not too messy—the whole point is to die with as little mess as possible, hence the bathtub. But a field doesn't require the heartache of cleanup. Death is nature. Natural. Earthy. Tangible.

World Haemochromatosis Awareness Week

World Haemochromatosis Awareness Week 1-7th June 2025

Hemochromatosis is a condition where the body absorbs too much iron from food, leading to iron overload. This excess iron can damage organs like the liver, heart, and pancreas, causing serious complications like liver disease, heart problems, and diabetes.

Haemochromatosis, aka the Celtic Curse, (Or, as I call it, the Celtic Cunt.) is what's caused nearly all the medical crap that's happened to this thing I call my body.

Chronic pancreatitis: √
Pancreatic tumor: √
Diabetes: √
And so on and so on and so one: √

Iron to overloaded my gall bladder, causing its rupture. And that's when I woke up with zero idea of who the fuck I was. Where the fuck I was. Or what life I'd been living.

I've typed up a bit about my experience over here. And this site is where I publish stories about living life as an amnesiac.

The main treatment for hemochromatosis is to remove iron from the body with scheduled visits for phlebotomy. Luckily I'm not scared of needles.

To be continued.

A nurse wearing a mask and gloves administers an IV to a patient’s hand in a hospital room. The scene, highlighting Haemochromatosis Awareness Week, includes medical supplies and equipment visible in the background.

My Worlds Of Words

Each morning, I wake and find myself still present. I am in a living room, lying on a sofa, observing my hands. They continue to function, holding a fork and bringing mashed potatoes to my mouth.

A cyclone churns within my mind, with memories and knowledge fragmented by the relentless force of unrealized possibilities.

My phone says it’s Saturday. I realize I’m at Jake and Gina’s place. I wonder if we slept together.

Maintaining a semblance of normalcy becomes increasingly difficult. They interact with me based on their understanding of my behavior, although I do not recall these interactions.

At this moment, my heart beats forcefully, reminiscent of trains on tracks. I cannot recall my address. I share my living space with two other people, one is my son. Each morning, I think of him. His age fluctuates in my memory, sometimes eight, sometimes eleven. I am approximately thirty-six years old.

Upon waking, the house felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable. Each morning, confusion persists. My mind is turbulent, resembling a hurricane that hurls debris against the structure of my skull. This debris consists of my fragmented memories.

I devote significant time to introspection. I realize that I have not left my residence in several days. Others encourage me to go outside, and I am inclined to comply. When they request that I engage in activities, it appears to provide them with reassurance.

External sounds, such as screeching tires, ambulance sirens, and barking dogs, evoke fear in me. These noises consistently cause distress, though the reason remains unclear.

I remember getting my clit pierced. I remember lying on a sterile cot, spreading my legs. The male piercer pushed the needle through my flesh. It hurt more than childbirth.

Words resemble crevices in mountains. I traverse the deteriorating, unclean fissures formed by the scrutiny of others. My heart resists contemplation, analysis, and recollection.

I cling to my words. My worlds of words. I get lost in the history of a lifetime.

ABOUT TIME

Here is what is this about. I don't know what I'm about. Nor does anybody else. 

Things, like time, are war. Games. War games. Time—is of the essence. I grasp the heavy rifle in my hands. I blast the abyss with bullets of memories, leaving sparkling lights that, slow, dim into the darkness. Often I wish I was still younger. My terrain in my head, then, was a much smaller area to blow up. 

Time after time—we do not have the luxury of forgetting that time is of the essence. The second hand unwinds. The drum beats out of time. 

Days and time whirl us up in its violent tornado. Lives living a billion schedules, pattering around the world in an infinitely interactive lacy web. 

Somewhere. Some wheres. Somethings. Things. My bed. My paintings. My Le Creuset Enameled Cast Iron Dutch Oven. Blue Azure. 

Now. I’m a writer. With published books. My published books are romance novels. Now I write my memories. My memories are rarely the same story accurately remembered. So. So I’m forcing myself to scrawl each version of the stories I remember. Then I just try to fit all the pieces together in a way that—fits. Or—doesn’t. 

I love pretty stories. I love writing. Now I write. Now I’m in the middle of a tornado.  Throwing the letters & words & exclamation points!!!

My brain is inside my skull. I know this is true because I’ve seen it. Seen images of this. In the X-ray I see see the tornado, violently rotating within a column of air. This whirlwind slices out pieces of what’s left in my mind. I see it scattered over the people I've known all my life or, seemingly, all my life.

A tornado is a violently rotating column of air. It is in contact with both the surface of the Earth and a cumulonimbus cloud. In rare cases, it connects with the base of a cumulus cloud. It is often referred to as a twister, whirlwind or cyclone.

I’m not sure why. I'm pretty sure I don't want to know why. Even if I knew why, I wouldn't remember anyway. Time. Flies. It's just a game I've never successfully searched through.

My memories. Carnival games. Loud. Tacky. Frustrating. Exhausting. But. What isn’t? 

Safety Is An Observation

Michelle Looking Through Giant Glasses

I want to see flowers. I want to feel warm water. I want to feel waves melting around around my body. I feel stupid. I feel smart. Do I feel smart because I'm so fucking stupid? Feelings are supposed to be shown, not told, when writing. Show don't tell. I want to feel happy. I want to eat. I want to know. I want my hair to not fall out. I need a break. I need a brain. I want a break that lasts me the rest of my life and beyond.

I don't want to be standing on the gymnastics floor, eight years old, with my gymnastics teacher, Wayne, behind me. Gently reaching around to push his hands down the front of my shorts. I told my mom.

She stared at me. Then started crying big, heavy tears. Then her face was wet, her eyes turning red.

I want my hair back. I want my life back. I want a sandwich. I want ice-cream. I want to eat with love. With people I love. And who love me. I want to sleep. Forever. I want to live happily. Indefinitely. I want to hold my newborn son, every one of these days. I want to be in love and mean it. I want to hide in a lake. I want to hide with fish. I want to write about people who exist, and who are good. Instead I'm swimming fiercely in rocky, murky water. My legs are drumsticks. My legs beat beat beat. The wood, shattering on the wet, sharp rocks. I taste blood. I remember the metallic, plastic, blasting—the sound of my typewriter smashing cement after I threw it over my second-floor balcony. Little brown buttons with letters in a dark courier font splattered the ground. H and I, two stated.

Whenever I find myself in the hospital room, standing next to the bed on which is resting my dead mother, in indecipherable spans of time, I am looking out the window. It is Summer Solstice, which means I am nearly exactly 17.5 years old. I am staring at the white blinds, which are slanted open. I look through countless strips of plastic. I am looking at the sky. The sky is blue. Above the top of the concrete roof of the fifth floor of the other wing of The Hospital. The sky is blue. It's that clear, clear, clear, clean, Windex blue. It's the blue that occurs only briefly. It happens on days with a slight breeze and little pollution. Danny and I left the trailer in San Jose. We left after the call came, around 7:30 a.m. Now, it was around 9:30. It wasn't yet 10:00. The light would be less clear at 10:00. It would start to look hot. And it was, after all, June. June 14th. 1990. I look at my mother. I look at her. She looks peaceful. I'd never seen her look so peaceful. Ever. The bandage wrapped around the top of her head was neat, and clean, and white. It only covered the top of her eyebrows. I would not--did not--think about the bloody wound hiding beneath the clean, white dressing. It was all dead. She was dead. Standing on my balcony, in Reno, I watched the explosion.

When the typewriter hit the concrete, the black ribbon spool still pressed against paper. After the ancient typing machine crashed onto the ground, I remember brown leaves drifting around my brown typewriter. They moved like ballerinas, floating in the blasted air. Today, now, I want to see the brown leaves drifting across the scuffled concrete of my patio. I want to look between the brown patio steps and see the ground. I want to hear the shuffling sound of shoes. People walk on the other side of the fence. They're unaware of what they're missing over here.

What I want to be is home. I want to be cooking paella on my stove. It's in our house. I toured it with Jay and a real estate agent. I want to be in our kitchen. I stand in front of the counter, chopping vegetables on the countertop that I designed. I want to boil water on the stove that I, after much research, had installed. Our 5-year-old son watches something silly on the TV with J. J is sitting on the long sofa. He holds a shot-glass of to-be-sipped-slowly tequila in his hand. They watch the green Bang & Olufsen television. I want to be there, at home, where I was--where I thought I was--safe. Safety is an observation.

Are memories just a bunch of polaroid pictures?

I’m not myself. I’m not Michelle Kathleen O’Kane. I’m just a foggy picture of whatever I once was. 

Now I’m an instant photograph. I’m searching for light to provoke my emulsion. I’m collecting layers—negative and positive layers, which helps to me diffuse into the infinitely developing image.

Time travel is complex, and fortunately I visit a person, place, or thing, that memory is ever the same twice. 

 This place. The soft grey shawl, my WIP on my bed. The book on my nightstand. French. 

Me Before and Me After incessantly converse about me. Every memory—every snippet of what used to be my life. 

My life used to encompass the worlds of seeing new places on other continents. And writing romance novels while I still believed in romance and excitement and love. Memories of sharing many meals with people I loved. 

I wake up while driving in various cars, and I’m always the driver. Frequently I am 280, approaching the 101/92 exchange. Aware. While I’m driving I surround myself with the color-changing hills. I’m humming along with Elvis Costello.  I’m watching the detectives. (The Angels Wanna Wear) my red shoes. 

I’m now pointed west, driving to Half Moon Bay. I’m in various makes of cars, all of which I owned. Today I’m driving a clutch—my blue Ford Ranger. This is the car I purchased with money I received after my mother died. I am now 18, and she’d died just a few months ago, while I was 17. 

I drive past memories. The Half Moon Bay Nursery, on the south side of 92.  on the south side of the road and now I’m just starting to drive through the outskirts of the town. My town. My ocean and sea salt and blue blue blue sky and sea, white wavy clouds tying the sun and sea together. 

I’ve finally come to realized and understand how crazy I am. 

I haven’t watched a movie with another person in over 5 years. I haven’t laughed with someone in as many years. A few times something I’m watching or hearing has caused the sound—the sharp chirp of a laugh. The noise scares me. Hearing my own laugh is such an unfamiliar sound that it shocks me. Then, of course, I’m sad. 

I’m rolling myself down a hill. I’m rolling across the green, twinkling grass and behind me is the grass, a 5’4” lane that I’m creating as I roll away.

That’s me. Again. 

I’m jealous of so many things I see on tv. Landscapes and cities and people at tables with white espresso cups. 

Lifes.