tiramichu , 7 hours ago (edited 7 hours ago)

It’s such a painful thing, and the scary truth is that it can happen to anyone.

I’m sure we’ve all experienced instances of this, in some smaller and insignificant way.

You take a packed lunch to work. Every day for five years you’ve taken a lunch to work, without fail. Its part of your routine, you don’t even have to think about it. Get your wallet, get your keys, lunch out the fridge and into your bag, out the door.

Then one day you open your bag at lunch-time, and it’s not there. Why isn’t it there, you think? You remember putting it there like always, but then the memories of different days are all the same as each other, and it just blurs into one.

And then you remember. Just as you picked up your wallet and keys, your phone rang. And it’s your Dad, who says he just had someone call to say he needs to transfer money to keep it safe, and you’re telling him no no no Dad it’s just a scam, don’t transfer anything! And you have to go or you’ll miss the bus, and did I get my lunch, yes yes I put it in my bag like always.

But you didn’t put it in your bag. Its still sitting in the fridge at home.

And obviously a lunch is not a baby. But the principle is the same. That frightening realisation that your own brain didn’t merely forget, but actually lied to you about what really happened that morning is the same.

And it could have been a baby instead.

Scary.