Three months ago I missed a biology exam – or more accurately, it missed me. I fell asleep the night before stressed that I was going to fail and already wondering how I would break the news to my dad when he inevitably asked. But the next day the test simply failed to happen.
“Did she seriously forget she set us a test today or is it tomorrow?” I asked my friend Zoe in a hushed whisper.
“What test? She never set anything.”
I didn’t think much of it back then, but now I think it could have been the first time it happened. A couple of nights went by seemingly without incident until that Friday when I fell asleep after an argument with my boyfriend and yet the complaints I made about him to Zoe were met with nothing but confusion.
“Who’s Darren? You never even told me you were dating anyone.”
As soon as I realised that she was being sincere I started to build layers of excuses. At that point I thought I must be going crazy so I claimed that I wasn’t properly dating Darren and of course that was why I forgot to mention it and I was just being dramatic and…
I don’t know if Zoe believed me at the time because when I talked to her the next day, our conversation had never happened. My phone records backed up her claim that we hadn’t talked the day before and my concern deepened. I went to sleep that night with my stomach complaining about more than just my dad’s attempt at making a new type of curry and I resolved to ask him about it tomorrow.
“Is there something strange about our family?” I asked him the next evening.
“What do you mean strange?” he asked but I was suddenly distracted.
My dad loves cooking. He might screw it up sometimes but I honestly can’t remember the last time I ate something that he hadn’t cooked from scratch unless I’d specifically requested it. Yet the meals he was pulling out of the fridge weren’t leftovers but branded ready meals that we apparently had several boxes of. The fridge door closed and its contents stopped casting their spell on me.
“Nevermind.” I said.
I remember exactly which incident solved the puzzle for me. I used to play sports back then. I used to run on my two perfectly functional legs. Twisting my ankle wasn’t a new experience but it hurt enough that the pain made it hard to fall asleep and then when I woke up I never had to worry about twisting my right ankle again.
I can’t ask my dad why he thinks my right leg stops just after my knee and as best as I can piece together everybody else thinks I was born this way. I fell asleep cursing it and as I rested the world rearranged itself to remove the problem. Now that I’ve started keeping more accurate records it seems that the world deletes whatever I hate the most every time I sleep. If I’m right and the biology test was the first instance then there are a few nights that I don’t even know what was taken from me yet. Maybe I never will. Or maybe at some point I’ll try to contact a friend I don’t speak with often only to find they don’t exist, try to practice a skill that it turns out I never had or find out that my least favourite flavour of jelly beans has never been invented.
There’s only so long I can stay awake for. I bought some adderall off a friend of a friend to keep me awake when the thing I would fall asleep hating is something I usually love. But the one time I used it, I felt so terrible that when I finally slept I woke up to find the tablets gone and my one time dealer confused that I thought she’d ever sold it to me.
I deleted my father a week ago.
I loved him but one night we got into a fight and even though I desparately tried to forgive him I guess I couldn’t. Or maybe the stress it was causing me to try not to be angry with him was what got me in the end. There’s no way to say. Now I find myself mourining the loss of a person that nobody else thinks I’ve ever met and I don’t know what to do.
The only thing it seems my power can’t remove is itself. Surely most nights it’s this bizarre curse I fall asleep hating the most but every morning I wake up with it still there. I’ve deleted so many terrible things and so many things I’d give the world to get back. I sleep as little as I can but I’m so, so tired and I don’t know what to do.
When I wake up, I’ll remember yesterday just fine.
But I wonder what the world will have forgotten.