Nebulous

“Tell me what you remember.”

“Lights.”

“What kind of lights?”

“I’m not sure. They just appeared in the sky.”

Lila watched as her psychiatrist wrote something down.

“And you don’t remember anything after these lights?” her new psychiatrist asked.

“No,” Lila answered. “It’s like I woke up from a dream I don’t remember.”

Her therapist, Dr. Gayle Summers, was not what she had expected. She thought for sure that it would be a waste of time, but just being able to talk openly about the missing time and her thoughts made Lila feel comforted in a way. This was only their second meeting, but she hoped something would come from this, some glimmer of a memory, some small answer that might bring her some comfort from those missing 6 months.

Lila found that in the two weeks she’d been home that she kept going back to her last memory before she disappeared. She couldn’t stop thinking about the lights.

She had asked her parents about them, but they seemed to have forgotten about them, if they had even been there in the first place. Which was another reason she liked to talk to Dr. Summers. Trying to piece everything together had her feeling like she was being pulled in different directions, being stretched thin. She was certain there had been lights, but there was no recollection.

She shared these thoughts with Dr. Summers.

“If they’re real to you, they’re real,” her therapist said. “Just because no one remembers these lights doesn’t mean you didn’t experience them. It could just be something in your memory that you’re holding onto from when you were gone. And hopefully soon you will discover what they mean.”

When she got home, she was suddenly struck with how tired she was.

“How was your appointment?” her mother asked, coming out into the front hallway when she heard Lila come in.

“It was fine,” she answered. “I think I’m going to go try and take a nap though. I’m kind of tired.”

“Of course,” her mother said, giving her a sympathetic look. “I’ll come wake you when it’s time for dinner.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

Lila went up to her room, closing the door behind her with a sigh. Her room felt calm, it’s quiet enveloping her. She felt herself relax a little and she climbed into her bed, ready to pull the covers over her head. She shimmied out of her jeans with a little difficulty and discarded them onto the floor from under the blankets. She shut her eyes and found a comfortable position.

But she couldn’t stop thinking about those damn lights. Despite how tired she felt, she sat up in bed, pushing the covers away and grabbing her laptop from off her nightstand where she had left it before she’d gone missing. She tried to turn it on, but realized the battery must have died while she’d been gone.

After plugging it in and waiting, she finally got it to start up.

Lila figured the best way to try and figure out if she was remembering these lights correctly was to just simply look them up, which seemed absurd to her when she really thought about it. But honestly, every aspect of her life currently felt absurd to her. She felt like she was living in some Lifetime movie, though she wasn’t sure where this one was going.

Finally the computer was fully on and she had Google open as quickly as she could, ready to begin her search. But there was nothing. She tried putting in the date of her disappearance and again got nothing. Maybe she had imagined them. It was entirely possible. If she could lose 6 whole months of her memory, certainly she could fabricate some parts of it.

She closed her laptop and set it back on the nightstand, before lying back down on her bed. She pulled the blankets over her head, wishing for darkness to wash over her. But her dreams were bright, sterile white, and that scared her more than anything.