8
It’s both pitch black and blindingly bright at the same time. The bright lights are the first thing I remember. I remember seeing it before I felt the pain. But now I think about it, I’m not sure if I did feel pain. Just confusion. Not a lucid confusion, not trying to work out what was going on, but an almost peaceful acceptance that I could do nothing but submit to whatever was happening.
It’s not that I don’t remember anything of what happened; I remember actively knowing nothing. It’s not a missing part of my memory: it’s a period of complete darkness, as though someone covered my eyes and plugged my ears. I don’t know how long that lasted, but I experienced it in real-time. That section, that passing of time, it isn’t missing; it’s there, but it’s blank. Blank until I started to be
