el tampoco es un new yorker

Amrita by Banana Yoshimoto
Chapter 1

I've often heard that if you go through something really intense your perception of the world will change entirely. Every now and then I wonder if things weren't different in my case.
Now I understand. I'm finally at a point where I can recall everything: all twenty-eight years since my birth, every one of the so-called "episodes" of my life as Sakumi Wakabayashi, that strange conglomeration of misfits who came together to form my family, those foods that I liked, those things that I didn't. Every element that had gone into making me who I was gradually made its way back to me, and now I have the power to reflect on all that has happened. It's like remembering a story someone told me in the past.
I can only perceive my past as a story. Nothing more.
In other words, at some point I had lost the power to distinguish what was real, all of those things that had happened in life prior to the accident. I no longer had any way of knowing how I felt about myself and the world. Perhaps I'd felt the same way all along, perhaps not. I really wonder what things were like.
Was my life, all those days and months and years, nothing more than past time, piled up like fallen snow?
How was I ever able come to terms with myself?
Apparently when you do something major like cutting off all your hair, your personality undergoes a transformation as well, because you change the way you act around other people.
...or at least that's what I've been told.
Before they performed my surgery, they shaved my head, and in an instant I was bald. By the time winter rolled around my hair had finally grown in, and I was sporting a trendy, short cut.
When I revealed myself to my family and friends, they barked out unanimously, "Sakuchan! We've never seen you with short hair. You look so different, almost like a new person."
Really? I thought, returning their smiles. Later, all alone, I opened the pages of my photo album in secret. Without a doubt, it was me in the pictures -- that long hair and radiant smile. All the places I'd visited, all the scenes I'd encountered. I recognized each one of them from somewhere. I remembered...
...the weather in this picture, and...
...I had my period when they took that shot, so it was a pain to even stand up, and...
...and so on.
There was no question about it; it really was me in that album. It couldn't have been anyone else. Still, something refused to ring a bell. A strange sensation, almost as if I had been floating.
Now I want to stand up and give myself, steadfast and determined, a round of applause for maintaining "me," even though I had been thrust into such a strange psychological dilemma.