The Girl Who Forgot Love

I woke up disoriented, the harsh hospital lights blinding me. My parents, faces pale and strained, sat by my bedside. They said I' d had a breakdown, a public humiliation at the Spring Fling. My boyfriend, Ethan. He had betrayed me. But as they spoke, a chilling truth settled over me: I remembered the facts, but the feelings were gone. The doctors explained it as dissociative amnesia – specifically, all emotional connection to Ethan had vanished. He visited, demanding I "remember us," utterly confused, even arrogant, when I offered only polite detachment. His parents tried too, bringing mementos of our past. I felt nothing but a quiet void where love, or even anger, should have been. Everyone around me was frantic for the 'old Ava,' heartbroken and distraught. But I wasn't. There was just this calm, unsettling emptiness, like reading a sad story about a character I barely knew. Why was everyone else more upset about my memory loss than I was? Was I broken? Who was I without the girl who'd loved him so fiercely, only to be shattered? Feeling like a disconnected observer in my own life, a fraudulent smile plastered on my face, I knew I couldn't pretend anymore. I needed to find out who Ava Miller was, now. Desperate for answers, I sought professional help. And that' s when destiny, or perhaps just a very small town, intervened. My new psychologist was Liam Walker: my kind, long-lost childhood friend, whose presence felt strangely, comfortingly like home.