Before the World Forgot Me

Accumulation

I went to the window of my apartment. The city was doing its evening thing. Lights coming on. People moving through streets toward somewhere else. Somewhere that mattered more than where they'd been. I thought about all the people I'd seen regularly over the years. The bus drivers. The checkout clerks. The people who worked at places I frequented. How many of them had left? How many had disappeared from my life and I'd never noticed?

How many people had I disappeared from?

I went back to the notebook. I opened it to the first page again. That single paragraph looked lonely there, surrounded by empty space. I started writing again, trying to document details of my own life that I might lose if no one was paying attention.

"My name is Eli Marsh. I'm thirty-two years old. I work in marketing for a pharmaceutical company, which is not as interesting as it sounds and probably less interesting than it should be. I've lived in this city for eleven years. Before that, I lived upstate with my parents. I went to university and studied business because I was unsure of myself and business seemed like a safe choice for unsure people.

"I have a best friend named Mara. We met in college. She's the only person I trust completely, though I don't tell her that. I have coworkers but I wouldn't call them friends. I have family but I don't call them often.

"I like coffee. I like reading. I like watching people in public spaces and making up stories about their lives. I like things that are quiet and don't demand much from me.

"I'm the kind of person people forget about. Not because I'm bad or forgettable in a way that matters. Just because I'm not the kind of person who leaves an impression. I'm the background. The peripheral figure. The person who's there but not there.

"I want to write this down before I forget who I am. Or before everyone else does."

The words kept coming. Spilling out. Personal details. Memories. Moments that felt important only because I was recording them. I wrote until my hand ached and my eyes felt grainy from staring at the page. I wrote my entire life into the notebook as if the act of writing could preserve it. As if documentation was the same thing as existence.

It was past midnight when I finally stopped. My hand was cramped. My apartment was quiet except for the hum of the radiator and the muffled sounds of the city beyond the walls. I looked at the notebook. Dozens of pages now. Filled with my handwriting. Filled with proof that I had lived long enough to accumulate details.

But something about it didn't feel true.

The words looked like forgeries. Like someone imitating the voice of a person they'd never actually met. I read over what I'd written and it felt hollow. Like I was writing about someone else. Like I was documenting a character from a book, not an actual human being with actual continuity.

I closed the notebook.

That night, I dreamed that I was walking through Rosario's and no one could see me. I ordered coffee and the barista looked directly through me. Other customers walked past without acknowledging my presence. I tried to speak but no sound came out. I waved my arms. I knocked over a cup. Nothing. The coffee shop continued its quiet humming regardless of my existence or my absence.

When I woke up, I couldn't remember exactly what I looked like in the mirror.

For just a moment, before my brain caught up to itself, I couldn't quite place my own face.

It took me several seconds to be sure it was mine.

The problem with documentation is that it forces you to notice things. Once you start writing things down, you can't unsee them. You can't unknow them. Every observation becomes evidence. Every small moment becomes data. By Friday, I'd filled seventeen pages in the notebook. Seventeen pages of accumulated small absences.

Thursday at work was the first real one.

I work on the fourth floor of a building that smells like recycled air and desperation. Marketing department. We're a subsidiary of a larger pharmaceutical company, and our job is to make medication for chronic pain seem like a lifestyle choice. It's depressing in a way that's difficult to articulate without sounding like I'm making excuses for myself. I've been there for six years. I know where the good coffee is, the best bathroom stall for crying, the times when the office is mostly empty so you can exist without being observed.

That morning, I was walking to my desk when Derek from accounting stopped me in the hallway.