Rewind

Prologue - ????

Perfect — your tone, pacing, and structure are already strong. Here’s your w*****d-ready version — formatted digitally with clean spacing, bold emphasis, and stylistic polish for flow and readability while keeping your exact tone.

Be careful what you wish for.

Seriously—engrave that on your brain, or at least slap it on a bathroom mirror so you see it while brushing your teeth.

Wishes have teeth. They don’t just nip; they bite—hard—and once they’ve sunk in, they don’t let go. They hold on like a bad habit, like guilt, like a leech that refuses to loosen even after you’ve thrown every metaphorical salt shaker at it.

I learned that the hard way. The kind of hard way that leaves scars you can’t see, but definitely feel.

Yeah, I’m lucky. Lucky to still be breathing, lucky to have a pulse, lucky to not be one of the names whispered in the hallways, followed by awkward silences and fake sympathy.

Lucky, but not okay.

It all started on my seventeenth birthday—supposed to be a big deal, right? Seventeen is that magical age when you’re still dumb enough to make bad decisions but old enough for them to have actual consequences.

The plan was simple: party, eat too much sugar, pretend the future didn’t exist.

Instead, I managed to screw it up so badly that even the universe was like, “Damn, dude, you didn’t have to go that far.”

See, I had everything. Friends, family, decent grades, a life that wasn’t perfect but at least made sense.

And I torched it. Set it on fire with both hands, smiling while I poured the gasoline.

For what? Oh, right—for nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Now I’m the proud owner of… nothing. No memories, no context, no identity beyond “anonymous loser #47.”

Turns out wiping your mind clean doesn’t make you mysterious or enlightened—it just makes you confused as hell with a migraine that feels like God accidentally sat on your head.

So yeah, welcome to How to Ruin Your Life 101.

I’m your host—formerly someone, now a walking cautionary tale.

If you’re wondering what you can learn from this class, it’s pretty simple: don’t. Just don’t.

If you ever think to yourself, “What if I could start over?”—congratulations, you’ve just wished for your own destruction in a shiny new package.

Alternate title for this train wreck: Rewind.

Because that’s what it feels like—like someone hit the reset button on me without asking. Except it’s not a clean rewind.

It’s the VHS kind, the one that screeches and tangles the tape until you’re left with static and a sense of regret that clings to your bones.

But fine. Let’s rewind. Let’s press play on the mess that was my life before everything went sideways.

Maybe if I tell it, I’ll understand it. Maybe I’ll even remember it.

Probably not, but hey—hope’s free, right?

So here’s the thing about losing everything: it’s not dramatic like in the movies. No swelling orchestra, no poetic fade to black.

It’s quiet, sneaky.

One day, you’re surrounded by people who know you, and the next, you’re a ghost walking through your own life.

Everyone smiles too hard, talks too slow, like they’re afraid you’ll shatter if they say the wrong word. It’s awkward, and weirdly funny, in the way that tragedy sometimes is when it’s still fresh.

People kept telling me, “At least you’re alive.”

Which, yeah, technically true. But when you wake up and don’t recognize your own handwriting, your own reflection, your own soul, being alive feels like an afterthought.

Like you’re a placeholder for whoever you used to be.

And the worst part? Everyone else seems to remember you better than you remember yourself.

They bring up stories, memories, moments you apparently shared, and you have to fake it—nod, smile, laugh at the right time.

It’s performance art, except the only audience that matters is everyone who already knows the ending except you.

I tried to act normal. I really did. But how do you play a role when you’ve lost the script?

The doctors called it “retrograde amnesia.”

Sounds fancy, right? Like something you could brag about at a party: “Oh, this scar? Just a little retrograde amnesia, no big deal.”

Except it is a big deal. Because it doesn’t just erase memories—it erases context.

You know words, facts, dates—but not what they mean to you.

I could recite my birthday, my address, even my blood type, but I couldn’t tell you what my favorite song was or why the smell of rain made me uneasy.

People think losing your memory is a blank slate, a clean start.

Spoiler: it’s not.

It’s like someone deleted the save file for your favorite game, but the NPCs are still walking around talking about quests you don’t remember accepting.

And here’s the messed-up irony—I asked for it.

I wished for a clean slate. Not literally, but close enough.

Seventeen-year-old me thought erasing pain meant erasing mistakes.

I thought I could trade guilt for freedom, grief for peace.

But that’s not how it works.

Pain isn’t a bug—it’s part of the program.

You don’t get to hit rewind without paying the price.

So yeah, I leveled up all right.

I’m not a person anymore, just a walking punchline in someone else’s bad joke.

The irony practically writes itself: kid wants a new life, gets one, hates it.

If there’s a moral here, it’s probably something cliché like “be careful what you wish for” or “the grass isn’t greener—it’s radioactive.”

But clichés exist for a reason—they’re the truest lies we tell ourselves.

And yet… there’s something strangely compelling about the second chance, even if it’s a cursed one.

Like maybe there’s still something left to rebuild, even if the foundation’s cracked.

Maybe this reset isn’t punishment—it’s the prelude to something I haven’t figured out yet.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pretending this is some inspirational journey.

There’s no neat bow, no “everything happens for a reason” crap.

I’m just saying maybe there’s still something under all this static.

So yeah. That’s where this begins.

My seventeenth birthday.

The day everything I thought I wanted collided with everything I couldn’t control.

I remember candles. Laughter. A wish I should’ve swallowed instead of speaking.

And then—nothing.

Just darkness.

Then light again.

Rewind.

Play.

Let’s see where this disaster goes.