Love in the Time of Vanity Fair

Chapter 14: Good Housekeeping

AU: Plug headphones on and hit the media for the feels

...

Psychological identity is comprised of a person's memories and experiences. The moments that we may perceive to be trivial, in reality, is a part of a bigger puzzle that makes us... us. According to Daniel Kahneman, the self is encompassed by two components: the experiencing self ― the present self that gets to make moments, and the remembering self ― the one that stores those moments.

Both of these are equally fundamental for what is experiencing without remembering? But what if that which makes up a person's individuality is suddenly just gone?

What if our very memories fail us?

How would you know how it feels to love and be loved if you do not remember any of it?

...

The day that Ian's memory started to store information again was the day I felt hopeful.

Pero hindi pala dapat pinangungunahan ang tadhana.

I forgot that despite his memory somehow regaining a semblance of how it is supposed to function, he doesn't remember the last five years. He doesn't remember me and everything that was associated with me. He had thirty-years worth of memories behind him and none of them include me.

He is an entirely different person and I am afraid that I do not know this Ian. The silent, humorless with a piercingly cold stare in front of me is not the same spontaneous, thoughtful, witty man that I knew. But it is hard to separate the one I knew from the one in front of me seeing as they are one and the same.

But every once in a while, whenever he's playing with Sam, whom he had embraced with no hesitation whatsoever as his son, I get to see glimpses of the man I love and it keeps me hopeful.

Hopeful na uuwi at uuwi pa rin siya sa akin.

I haven't really told him the entire narrative of two years ago. He doesn't know that we did not end on good terms and I cannot find the strength to tell him. Not when I just got him back. I fear that if he knows what really happened, accidents, threats, letters, and all, he might think of the worst. And I may lose him again.

It's selfish of me, I know. But how does one react when faced by a conundrum such as this one?

Meron bang handbook somewhere to guide me on what to do? Because honestly, I have no idea what I am doing. I cannot analyze the situation clinically, not when I am too close to it. My own personal feelings are clouding any attempt to rationalize any of these.

Ian regained full motor function but his cognitive therapy had to be continued.

The days he doesn't have therapy were spent with Sam. The kid just squeals in glee whenever Dada comes to pick him up before I go to work and the nights after I pick him up from his father's apartment were filled with endless, giddy stories of what they did together.

"Me and dada fwew a kite"

"Dada made dinosauw cookies"

"Dada and me dwive to park"

Ian just spoils Sam rotten, I had to put my foot down when I saw Sam driving a tiny version of his own Aston Martin, a toy car made for kids of course, which I am pretty sure he had customized.

He dismissed it saying that it was his way to bawi for the two years he missed. I gave him a piece of my mind and with a couple more of coaxing, he conceded to limit the toys he buys lest my own apartment turns into a toy store. Heaven knows Sam doesn't need more especially when his room had been turned into every kid's own dreamland.