Cole Kazdin - Deja Vu, Again

 

I wanted a fresh start. My boyfriend Adam broke up with me. I was living in New York. He broke up with me and moved across the country to Los Angeles. He was a good guy. It was just one of those going nowhere for three years kind of relationships. Neither of us had done anything horrible, like have an affair. We liked each other. We just weren't a good fit, which my mother used to tell me on the phone all the time, “You, guys, are both such nice people. Maybe you're just not a good fit.” 

 

But Adam and I were just passive enough to keep it going. If things ever got bad, like if one of us might start to muster the courage to pull the plug, then it would be someone's birthday, [audience laughter] or we'd get really great concert tickets and that would keep the relationship going. I remember in three years, Adam never told me he loved me. I think I loved him, but I wasn't going to say at first, because that's how mature I am. 

 

And then, one day, Adam took me out to this really nice dinner and he told me he really cared about me and he didn't want to marry me. It was a reverse proposal. [audience laughter] And we broke up and that was it. He moved to LA. I remember it was so painful, I just wanted to forget him and forget even the last three years. Just wake up one morning and start fresh. 

 

I got my wish. I woke up in an ambulance wearing a cheerleading outfit, which, if you're over 30 and it's not Halloween, just raises questions. [audience laughter] There were EMTs all around me, and I was being placed on a gurney, and then I was being put into a CT scan and then I was in this hospital room with all these concerned strangers gathered around the bed. But they weren't strangers. I just couldn't identify them. Because what I didn't know is there had been an accident. 

 

Earlier that day, I'd been filming a television pilot. It was a movie spoof show, and the pilot was a parody of Bring it On, the cheerleading movie. And the producers, who were horrible, horrible people, strong armed me into doing a stunt we hadn't planned or rehearsed. I was to be thrown high up in the air and caught. I was thrown high up in the air. I landed on my back and my head. I suffered a massive concussion. I could barely walk and I had no idea who I was. Diagnosis, amnesia. 

 

So, I also didn't know that my boyfriend had broken up with me and moved across the country to LA. I didn't know anything. In the hospital, someone put a cell phone up to my ear. They said it was my mother on the phone. I heard this frantic female voice. It meant nothing to me. A friend knew where I lived and took me home, dug the keys out of my purse, put me into bed. I wanted to call my dad. I just had that thought. And my friend said, “Why don't you rest? We can call him later.” 

 

But I wanted to call my dad and I needed help, because I didn't know the number. And again, my friend just said, “Why don't you sleep for a little while and then we can call him?” I got so frustrated, he was putting me off and I didn't understand why. And I said, “I want to call my dad. Why aren't you helping me?” He looked at me like I was out of my mind. And finally, he said, “We just did call your dad. In fact, we've done this three times. Every time you hang up the phone, you ask if you can call your dad. So, we can call him, but it'll be the fourth time and I'm just worried we're going to freak him out.” 

 

This whole conversation, by the way, is happening with me still wearing the cheerleading outfit. [audience laughter] Because when the hospital discharges you, it's like prison. They give you the clothes you showed up with, which for me was the costume from the pilot, which is a little white pleated miniskirt and a little navy and white top. I had both short and long-term amnesia. I knew some things, like I knew how to speak and I knew how to read, but I didn't know the big stuff, like who I was. I also couldn't retain anything. 

 

So, if someone left the room and came back 10 minutes later, we had to start over. I was living, quite literally, moment to moment, a cat walks into the bedroom, what is this cat doing here? They tell me it's my cat. People came and went, but they were all strangers to me from a past I didn't even know existed. They tried to help. I remember my best friend Amy stormed into my bedroom screaming, “She's a vegetarian. Don't let her eat any meat.” [audience laughter] 

 

It sounded familiar, but it didn't mean anything. I could have been gnawing on a veal shank. It sounded important, so I didn't want to forget it. There was a pad of post it notes and a pen on my bedside table. So, I wrote it down, so I wouldn't forget. I wrote, “You are a vegetarian.” Someone had called Adam and he flew in from LA right away. He just stayed at my bedside with tears in his eyes. In fact, the first night, he slept in my bed with me, which I thought was weird and presumptuous, [audience laughter] like, “Who is this guy?” He told me he was my boyfriend, but I mean, he could have been the mailman. I don't know. [audience laughter] 

 

And the next day, he showed me pictures of us together to see if he could jog my memory or maybe even to make a case for the fact that were a couple. Apparently, it was a recent trip I had just taken to LA. Adam and Cole at the beach. Adam and Cole in front of Man's Chinese Theater. Adam and Cole in the Ferris wheel at the Santa Monica Pier. I was in the pictures, but I remembered none of it. I wrote everything down. I was terrified of forgetting. Every piece of information was precious. Anytime someone told me something, or on the rare occasions where something might come back on its own, I wrote it down. “You are a vegetarian. We are at war with Iraq. Kristen is your friend who is slutty.” [audience laughter] 

 

One afternoon, I was coming home from physical therapy. I was in a cab going over the Queensboro Bridge and I noticed the hole in the skyline where the World Trade Center twin Towers used to be. That's weird. I wrote it down. Post it, note. “Twin towers gone.” Adam was the wonderful boyfriend. This accident was the best thing to ever happen to our relationship. He took care of me, took me to my weekly neurologist appointments and almost daily physical therapy. He gave me my medications and then held me at night when I woke screaming from the nightmares that those medications gave me or from the sheer disorientation of not knowing who or where I was. 

 

A girl from yoga visited. I do yoga. [audience laughter] What else do I do? I was on this detective mission to find out who I was. I found journals written in my handwriting in another language. Adam tells me it's Portuguese, from when I lived in Brazil. “I lived in Brazil? That's so cool. [audience laughter] What else do I do? Do I paint? Can I cook? Am I an asshole? What if I'm an asshole?” [audience laughter] I overheard doctors saying things like, “We don't know how long she's going to be like this and we're not sure if she'll ever fully recover.” They're talking about me. I'm sitting there in the room while they're having these conversations. 

 

The only thing that I could be sure of was this growing pile of post it notes on my bedside table. The bigger that pile got, the more of a person I became. But it still wasn't me. It was just information filling an empty space. One afternoon, I was in a cab coming home from physical therapy, going over the Queensboro Bridge and I started to cry. I didn't know why. I just started crying and I couldn't stop. And it was right as were passing the hole in the skyline where the Twin Towers used to be. It was a really chilling empty space, almost like ghosts of buildings. And I felt flooded. I wailed and I didn't understand it. And then, it hit me. I was remembering not a fact or a person, but a feeling. It was the first time since the accident that I felt real. 

 

That night, Adam was tucking me into bed. He had just given me my medications. So, he was writing on a post it note that he had just given me my medications for when in 10 minutes I asked if it was time to take my medication. I was watching him, the way he was taking care of me and I was overcome. And I said, “I love you.” And he said nothing. So, I said it again, because I had amnesia and I could get away with that. [audience laughter] “I love you.” And again, nothing. I didn't understand. And then, it came back, the breakup and all the pain that went with it. His move to LA. And then, a post 911 reconciliation. September 11th happened and we decided we were going to give it one more try. 

 

I went to LA to visit him. We went to the beach, and we went to Man's Chinese Theater and we rode the Ferris wheel, the Santa Monica Pier. But I didn't care about the past anymore, because all I knew was this, right now. And here was this man doing everything for me. And if this wasn't love, what was? And why was he even here? I think the answer is he's a really, really good person. He cared about me very, very deeply. But he was a Giuliani boyfriend, good in crisis. [audience laughter] Maybe he loved me and couldn't say the words. I'll never know. I think I loved him. But maybe I just wanted to say thank you and I couldn't tell the difference. 

 

It took about six months for me to recover. My memory just came back slowly over time. And then, I must have been fully healed, because a few months after that, Adam and I broke up again. [audience laughter] Only this time I knew it was coming because we'd done it before. I had wanted this fresh start and I got it. I mean, I lost everything. I lost myself. But it didn't change reality and it didn't even change me. I was still the same person. I was even in the same relationship. When I got myself back, I realized nothing had changed. But this time, there was something comforting about that, because it meant I finally knew who I was and it meant I could move forward. It meant even without my memory, I was still me. Thank you.