“Just try to tell me what you remember,” he said.

He smiled warmly. As far as therapists go, he was nice. Patient. Reassuring. I looked at the clock. Grandpa wouldn’t be back for a while. I had nowhere to go, nothing to do.

“What do you remember?”

I don’t remember much. Oh, the pain, sure. But that’s different. The pain was constant. That pain flowed through my veins and across my blackened skin, even working its way up to the blink of my eye and the pulse in my neck. Every minuscule cell that makes up my body throbbed with an agony so powerful it could control masses, start wars, destroy nations. It festered in every wrinkle, every joint and twitch and breath. That pain was all-consuming.

Maybe that’s why I can’t recall anything else.

I don’t remember the plane spiraling out of the sky like something out of a superhero movie. I don’t remember an impact that should’ve killed me. Did kill, I might add, everyone else.

I don’t remember being alone in the blackest of nights with wildly cold temperatures, or hearing the vindictive, howling echo off the emptiness around me.

I don’t remember wishing to die, opening my eyes every morning, again and again and again, and cursing into the frost that I had lived to see another day. I don’t remember the hunger, the way my stomach became like a bad boyfriend, never quite leaving me alone, snarling in the back of my head, reminding me of all the ways I had failed it.

I definitely don’t remember a chopper appearing out of nowhere, deafening the silence and scattering metal scraps and stray body parts in its wake. I don’t remember being flown to a hospital, having lights shone in my face, or being poked and prodded, despite, might I remind you, my never-ending pain.

Thankfully, I don’t remember the drugs they gave me. Then I really did sleep – for the first time in 63 hours, apparently. I don’t remember slowly coming back to consciousness, part of me still desperately clinging to that cloudy bliss.

I don’t remember realizing that the unthinkable had happened and now I had to deal with it. I don’t remember the stares and glances and pitiful looks. I don’t remember the nightmares. And I don’t remember what it once felt like not to be absolutely alone.

“I don’t remember anything.”