Echoes in the Mind

The world outside was buzzing, full of color, motion, and chatter—but inside her mind, it was still. Too still.

Layla sat quietly in the corner of her room, her gaze fixed on the window though her eyes saw nothing. Not really. Not anymore. To anyone passing by, she looked serene, even calm. But the storm inside her was silent and relentless. It wasn’t the kind of storm that broke windows or flooded cities—it broke identity. It flooded thought.

Her doctor had called it “dissociative amnesia.” Words that sounded clinical, even neat. But nothing about her condition felt neat. It was messy, chaotic, like trying to rebuild a shattered mirror from memory.

She remembered her name. Layla. She knew she liked the color green. She remembered the melody of a song her mother used to hum, though not her mother’s face. She remembered tears—but not the reasons.

Each day, she walked through her own life as though she were a guest in someone else’s story. Familiar items brought no comfort. Photographs on the wall smiled at her like strangers. Sometimes, she stared at her reflection in the mirror for minutes at a time, trying to see herself in it. Trying to catch a flicker of the girl she once was.

But that girl lived behind a locked door in her mind—and Layla had no key.

She kept a journal now. Her therapist told her it might help. At first, the words felt forced, like she was pretending to be someone she wasn’t. But slowly, they began to flow. Not memories—those still played hide-and-seek with her consciousness—but thoughts, dreams, fragments.

One night, she wrote:

"What if I'm not missing memories, but hiding from them?"

The thought chilled her. Could trauma be so cruel that her own mind would build walls around it? Could love, heartbreak, loss, or guilt be so unbearable that forgetting was the only way to survive?

Layla began to paint. It was something she didn’t know she could do, but it came naturally—almost instinctively. Her brush danced across the canvas, forming shapes, faces, symbols. One day, she painted a small house under a sky of fireflies. The image pulled at something deep within her. She didn’t know the house, but her chest ached at the sight of it. Was it a memory? A dream? A message from her buried self?

She showed it to her therapist, who gently encouraged her to explore these images. “Your mind is speaking,” she said. “Listen.”

And so, Layla listened.

Weeks turned into months. Some days were bright—filled with moments of clarity, a sudden scent triggering a laugh, a certain sound unlocking the echo of a voice. Other days were heavy—filled with frustration, confusion, the sharp pain of not knowing where she came from.

But she kept walking.

She joined a support group—others who had lost parts of themselves to trauma, illness, or tragedy. In them, she saw her reflection. Not her face, but her struggle. She was not alone. And in that simple fact, there was healing.

One evening, after another long session of painting, Layla stepped outside. The sky was blushing orange. A breeze kissed her skin. She closed her eyes and listened to the world. Birds chirped. A child laughed nearby. The wind rustled leaves like pages of a book being turned.

She didn’t remember her past, not yet—but she felt something new blooming inside her: peace. Not the peace that comes from perfect clarity, but the peace that comes from acceptance. She was no longer fighting the silence. She was learning to live within it. To find herself not in lost memories, but in the life she was building now.

Her past might return. Or it might not.

But Layla had stopped waiting at the locked door. She had turned away—and begun to walk a new path.

A path of presence. Of becoming. Of hope