Roots

Content note: Contains sensitive themes related to trauma, injury, and memory loss.

The rain whispered against the windows as I slowly opened my eyes.

The dimming light allowed me to make out a comfortable beige chair to the right of what appeared to be a bed. On the left, atop a small side table, sat a vase filled with my favorite flowers—lilies—as an unfamiliar feeling settled in my chest.

Where am I?

The question echoed through my mind.

I couldn’t recognize the comfortable bed I was lying in, nor the beautiful painting of a beach and gentle waves hanging on the wall in front of me. I didn’t recognize the faces captured in a delicate frame resting on the mahogany bedside table, either.

I tried to remember what had happened, digging through my mind for answers, but the only recollection I could grasp was being in my private library, sitting in my favorite chair—the one I had chosen after an exhausting day of searching. I remembered sipping tea, wrapped in my oversized hoodie, a book in my hands and a chenille blanket draped over my legs.

I had been blinking more often than usual—the first sign it was time for bed. I remembered standing up and then…

Blackness.

In that darkness, all I felt were the heavy beats of my heart against my chest—burning, aching, loud.

I fell hard, headfirst onto the cold hardwood floor. I couldn’t call for help. I couldn’t get up. I couldn’t move.

As I took in my surroundings, footsteps approached.

“Good morning, Mrs. Vellosi. How was your night?”

The sweet voice echoed through the room. I opened my eyes to see a petite woman with olive skin walking toward me. She wore light blue scrubs; her blonde hair was tied into a messy bun, her light pink lipstick brightened by a wide, warm smile.

“I’m well, I think,” I said. “Can you please tell me where I am?”

Her eyebrows lifted, and for a brief moment I caught a trace of concern crossing her face.

“You’re in the guest room of your residence, remember?” she said politely, checking my temperature and taking my blood pressure.

“Sure, of course,” I replied, hoping my steady tone didn’t reveal the uncertainty I felt—because I didn’t remember. At all.

When I was a child, I was involved in a terrible car accident. My father was driving his bright red GMC truck on our farm, and as usual, I was sitting right beside him.

“Come on, kid. Let’s go for a ride!"

His voice echoed across the pasture as I fed my horse a carrot.

I ran, opened the truck door, and jumped into the passenger seat, quickly fastening my seat belt—just as my mom had always told me to.

“Cici, honey, there’s no need for a seat belt,” he said with a smile. “We’re just going to the neighbor’s farm. It’s close.”

Though I hesitated, as a ten years old I listened. I unbuckled my seat belt. It was a short drive, after all.

My Sacrifice by Creed started playing as the engine roared to life, and suddenly there it was—that warm feeling flooding my body and mind with happiness. It was as if I had entered in a new world where only my father and I existed, our own private bubble.

He was my hero. My everything.

After my mom passed away two years earlier, it was just him and me against the world.

We sang loudly, laughed, made silly faces—and then the next thing I knew, I was lying on the road, salty tears running down my face. I tried to breathe, but it hurt. I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t respond. I tried to call for my dad, but it was useless.

I heard screams filling the road as I fought to keep my eyes open, but I wasn’t strong enough.

After countless hospital visits, doctors, and endless physical therapy sessions, I learned to walk and speak again. But something had changed. I no longer felt like myself.

I returned to school and lived what looked like a normal life, but the doctors warned me that my memory would become—politely put—disruptive over time. There was no way to know when, or how much, of my memory would be compromised.

I always knew this day would come, the day when almost everything would fade. I just hadn’t expected it to happen so soon.

Now, I couldn’t even recognize my own house—the house I grew up in, where I danced during celebrations, where flower beds wrapped around the front walls, where I had my first kiss in the treehouse out back. The place where… where…

A deep sadness rose in my chest, tightening until breathing became difficult.

What else am I missing?

How long have I been like this?

How can I be so lost inside myself?

The ache in my chest refused to fade. No matter how hard I fought it, exhaustion won. I closed my eyes.

Trying to remember—trying to save myself—was too much.

I dreamed.

A warm breeze brushed my face and tangled in my hair. I looked up at clouds painting strange shapes across a blue sky. When I looked around, I realized I was at the beach.

The ocean stretched endlessly before me. I turned and saw a beach house behind me. I was alone in this paradise.

I moved toward the water. It washed over my feet, my ankles, my knees.

Then something felt wrong.

My thoughts grew muddled. The air felt thin. Panic swelled.

I was drowning.

I couldn’t swim.

“Move your legs,” my mind commanded.

“Move your arms,” it screamed.

“Harder. Faster.”

I was frozen.

Faces surfaced and vanished as I reached for them. Voices overlapped, indistinguishable.

“An accident—”

“The poor kid—”

“Hurry, take her to the hospital—”

“She may never recover—”

My head throbbed. My heart pounded. My lungs burned as I surrendered to the darkness.

No.

Not today.

Not like this.

Hope sparked.

I moved my arms. My legs followed. I fought upward, harder and faster, pushing away from the ocean floor until I broke the surface—only to fall, as if from the sky itself.

I landed headfirst onto a bed of leaves, coughing violently as air rushed back into my lungs.

When I looked around, I saw a red truck. I heard music playing, two voices singing together. I heard brakes, screams.

I watched the entire accident unfold as an outsider, standing at the edge of the road.

I feared I wouldn’t wake up.

I feared I wouldn’t remember anything else.

I feared I would become an empty shell.

The realization hit me quietly: I won’t remember my life.

I sat down on the road and rested, accepting the loss.

Sunlight slowly filled the room, warming the walls and softening the last sharp edges of fear. From somewhere beyond the doors came a distant, steady sound—life continuing.

“Hellen, darling let me carry you.”

The voice reached me gently, yet firmly, pulling me back from the edge. There was something familiar in it — something that grounded me more deeply than any memory ever could. I felt myself being lifted from the darkness, held by a presence I didn’t need to understand to trust.

I opened my eyes.

At first, all I saw was blue — a deep, endless blue, like the ocean I had drowned in countless times, the same ocean I had always fought to rise from. But this time, it didn’t pull me under.

It stared back at me.

Those eyes belonged to a little girl, framed by delicate features and a smile so soft it broke something open in my chest. Small hands rested on mine, warm and real, anchoring me to this moment.

And suddenly, I knew.

I knew that laugh.

I knew that presence.

I knew this place.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, the fog lifted. I wasn’t lost. I wasn’t empty. I hadn’t disappeared.

I hadn’t remembered my life — but my life had remembered me.

And in that quiet, fragile instant, as I held onto her and she held onto me, I finally understood:

I was home.