The First Time. 🇺🇸

Prologue.

My cold feet rip on the floor, the thin layer of skin that finally began to cover my nicks stand out, tearing me a grimace.

I pitch me on one side, then on the other, like an alcoholic person.

Am I under the effect of any medicament ... a narcotic ... I would like to answer that no, but the situation is much more complicated than that.

My legs flutter quickly, and I do not bother to cushion my fall by using my two frail arms. My shoulders violently hit the floor first, followed by my crushing face, accompanied by a thud.

Is this time my nose just broken, or my jaw again? This second hypothesis makes me emit a snort. The jaw is the only thing I could call extremely painful. And no matter what liters of alcohol I could swallow this time, I should pay myself a few painful weeks.

I try again to know why I am here. To tell the truth, I know it from the beginning. How could I forget ... Forget, this word seems to me so incongruous. Is it really possible to forget ... Jack Miller, my so adorable and incompetent doctor, assured me that it was in the order of things "to forget" for normal people.

Had he been aware that by saying these little words, he had struck the first blow of a long list, to a girl who was only eight years old.

Normal people ... Whoo how could he announce with so much grip a word so filthy. I was only 8 years old at the time, and his ample face had definitely vaccinated me doctors. He had turned to my mother and simply explained that I did not function like the others.

Many parents hear that, and they more or less surpass the difference of their offspring as a child. And that's what they did. More or less good. But what was changing in my case was that it was not a matter of time, learning or maturity. My brain was born, and would remain dilapidated. Unable to let himself live without forgetting.

At 8, being abnormal did not seem so complicated. I was an extremely fluent oral student, my grades were close to excellence and my family loved me.

Then, the difference that seemed to me to be a force became dangerous. My brain was not as bright as everyone seemed to believe. My memory beat an incredible record, but my intelligence quotient was only very average.
I learned so easily dozens of lines, numbers and images without being able to put explanations. But, sometimes I made mistakes on a simple math exercise, being unable to properly use the formula I knew by heart. I was thus a machine with infinite storage capacity, but without a processor.

I began to read all scientist research, looking for an explanation.

Without result.

Every page of ours lessons was spinning in my mind. Every word and explanation of our teacher came back to me constantly without understanding them. I did not understand how I could know so much without being able to use them.

My friends no longer too, and some began to believe that I was lying, that I did not remember anything, that I cheated to make my interesting. I was hurt to think we could believe that I cheated or lied. I was only 8 years old, and I just wanted to be loved.

To reel, as I do now, I realize how naive I was to think that being loved would make things right. I did not understand that it was precisely this feeling that would kill me slowly.

Because it had been so easy for me to accept that I understand nothing to science and mathematics, and so painful not to forget him.

My mind was divided into several parts. Images and data related to distinct feelings, and were classified by epoch. I had always been able to manage the overflow of memories, to put order in order not to go crazy.

It had, of course, taken me months to come to understand how I could sort and organize my mind, without information, data or a face interfering in another context. I had built a real library, with departments and years. Each memory was a page, a chapter or sometimes an entire book in my library

The first months of school were hard after the diagnosis. I passed from the gifted and hyperactive child to the problem child. The schoolteachers dared not tell me anything, knowing that I would not forget anything.

The students constantly tested me on specific points, and if unfortunately I could not answer them, they laughed at me. No matter how many times I explained to them that I could not know what I had never read or heard, they called me a liar.

When I reopen this part of my library today, I distinctly hear the hubbub of their laughter. I do not need to catch a particular book, or even open it to feel the chills of terror again. My cheeks get wet quickly, dozens of tears running down my cheeks, victims of memories from my youngest age.

Shelves are so numerous now. I sometimes sail between them, looking for a specific moment, a name or an emotion. In these moments, I remain motionless disconnected from the world, vulnerable.

I was searching the language shelf when I heard his voice for the first time.

I resumed almost immediately my place on the reality. My eyes fluttered under the bright light of the sun. I had never been fired from my library because of a voice. It was my sanctuary, and no one had ever managed to reach me.

Never, before him.