There is no me. I do not exist … There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed.

There is no me. I do not exist. There used to be a me, but I had it surgically removed

(Television) Humor will never be the same. Sarcasm, irony, and cynicism will disappear. (Sylvia) Right. I'm having mine surgically removed. (Rita) Ma, cut it out!

I that was near your heart was removed therefrom

"I went through a lot. I went through a lot of changes. I lost weight and some unfortunate fellows said I did surgery."

I suffered at the time from an ugliness I no longer find on my childhood face.

For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.

Somebody took my actual physical presence away and substituted this

Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.

You have stolen my face from me: you know it and I no longer do.

If for helping my brothers, for handing out surgical masks, for guiding, they have to remove me, let them remove me.

I thought, acted, and thereupon found myself removed.

WE ARE NOT WHAT we think we are. The stories we tell of ourselves are like thin trails across something that is more like the ocean. A mask afloat on the open sea. There were moments before the memory’s return when I experienced what I now understand as its absence as not a gap but a whole other self, a whole other me. As if a copy of me had secretly replaced me. An android of me moving through the landscape, independent of the other me, exactly like me but not me. Every now and then, I could see the distance between us. Three times, in particular, this other self had appeared before me.

I was reincarnated as my former self.