The Talk
812 Words
"Just meet me. Please. I need you to help me prove that I exist."
She agreed, though her tone suggested she was agreeing with someone she was genuinely worried about. Someone unstable. We met at a café, not Rosario's, somewhere neutral. She ordered coffee. I ordered nothing. I just sat across from her with my notebook and I asked her to tell me everything she remembered about me.
"This is weird," she said. But she started talking anyway.
She told me about the first day we met. Freshman dorm. She was crying because her roommate situation had fallen through. I asked if she was okay. It was such a small gesture. Such a minor thing. But apparently, I was the only person who'd asked. And that had mattered enough for her to remember it eight years later.
I wrote it all down. Word for word. Every detail. The way she described the moment. The emotion in her voice as she talked about it.
"Do you remember when I told you I loved you?" I asked.
She looked confused. "What?"
"When I told you I loved you. That I was grateful for you. When did that happen?"
"You've never said that," she said.
My stomach dropped. "I haven't?"
"No. You're not really the emotional type. You show it but you don't say it."
And it was true. He was right. Some part of me knew that I'd never said those words to her. But another part of me had a vivid memory of saying them. Of sitting on her couch late at night after too much wine and telling her that she was the only person who made me feel real.
Had I imagined that? Had I fabricated a memory where I'd been more honest than I actually was?
"I should have said it," I said. "I should have told you."
"You can tell me now if you want," Mara said. But she said it gently, like you speak to someone who is clearly unraveling.
"I love you," I said. "I have for a long time."
She reached across the table and took my hand. It was the most physical contact we'd had in months. Maybe longer. "I know," she said. "I know you do. Even if you've never said it."
I wrote that down too. Word for word. The exact moment I told her. The way her hand felt. The way she responded. Documentation of a moment that might be the only moment where I truly existed in her awareness.
After she left, I sat at the café for another two hours. I kept writing. I wrote about Mara. About the eight years of friendship. About how she was the closest thing to real connection I'd ever had and how even that felt fragile. How even she seemed to be forgetting me incrementally. Not all at once, but gradually. Slowly. The way a photograph fades when you leave it in the sun.
By Friday, I'd filled three new notebooks.
I went to the pharmacy and bought more. I bought twelve blank notebooks. I brought them home and I stacked them on my desk. I labeled each one. Volume 1. Volume 2. Volume 3. And so on. I was going to create a comprehensive archive. A complete history. Everything I could remember about myself, written down with as much detail as possible.
On Friday night, I reread everything I'd written.
And something strange happened.
The more I read my own documentation, the less real it felt. Like I was reading a biography of a stranger. Like I was researching a fictional character. The words on the page didn't match the person I experienced myself to be. The memories described in the notebooks felt like they belonged to someone else.
Or worse. Like they were becoming less real the more I documented them.
Like the act of writing something down was draining it of its reality. Like putting an experience into language was killing it. Like my life was being preserved in the way that insects were preserved in amber. Still visible. Still there. But dead.
Saturday morning, I did something I rarely did. I called my parents.
"Hi honey," my mother said. "How are you?"
The same greeting. Every time. The same lack of actual curiosity.
"Can you tell me about my birth?" I asked.
"Your birth?"
"Yeah. I want to know. All the details. I'm writing something. A family history. I want to get the facts right."
She told me again. The hospital. The weight. The time of day. All of it the same as she'd told me on the phone earlier in the week. I wondered if she was reading from something. If I'd become the kind of person she kept facts about rather than the kind of person she actually knew.
"Can I ask you something?" I said.
"Of course."
- Writer
