"I'm not worried about it at all. I am who I am, the product of all of the choices and decisions that I have made, even if they aren't things I can instantly recall. I think that when there's a blank spot in your mind where your past should be, your perspective changes. You are willing to make sacrifices like that, taking all the bad with the good, all the negative things that you'll probably hate about yourself, just to be able to have a story, a complete picture of yourself in your head. It’s something that you never really focus on, your own self-image, this culmination of all events of your life, things you've said, done. People you've known, influences, and so on. It’s just always there. And with me, it's like I have this personality and these likes and dislikes, and no past to reconcile them with. So no, I'm not worried about it, I welcome it."

"I see," I said to her, and I did understand. It just seemed like there were so many things that I could easily throw away in my own past, just trade them in for a big black empty space, so I wasn't really looking at things from her side of the fence. It seemed like amnesia would be a welcome and beneficial affliction when I was depressed about how things had turned out. But I pushed all that aside, psychologically, because no good was coming of dwelling on things like that when I was sitting in a swing in the park with her,  watching her as she somehow defied all of my expectations, both for maintaining her balance despite gravity's pull, and for matters of the heart.