The Lost Memory and the Lighthouse

Here is another illustration I did based on a friend's poetry, but have now made up a new story to go along with it. 

She woke up one day on a couch in an apartment in a small city and had no idea who she was. It filled her with a great sense of terror. She didn't look for any of the occupants of the apartment, she didn't look for any clues to who she was, she just fled. She ran from the apartment and hitchhiked. For the next two years she traveled. She hitchhiked from place to place, she train hopped, she sneaked on to greyhound buses. She wanted to go everywhere she could. She hoped that she would see a place that looked familiar to her and it would trigger her memory to come back. She went to libraries and looked through newspapers with missing persons ads hoping to see her face. She went to coffee shops with access to computers and looked up amnesia on the internet. One day, she even broke down and went to a free clinic, but they kept hinting she should go to the police, and the idea filled her with dread, and she knew she needed to listen to her instincts so she fled again. 

After two years of travelling and not finding herself again, she was exhausted and hopeless. One day she was on a train and it rolled past hills and twisted toward the coast. As she looked from the open doors to the sea, she felt something. Not familiarity so much as comfort. The sea beckoned to her. She realized that every time her travels led her to the sea, she felt a greater sense of inner peace. The place wanted her to make it her home even if it had never been her home before. When the train slowed down, she hopped off and walked toward the water. She plopped down on the sand and stared at the sea. She stared at it for hours. She listened to the waves. She felt her heart in her chest pound rapidly. Soon, the blue sky was blotted with gray clouds and it began to rain. She still stayed and stared at the sea until she was completely drenched and shivering. She could feel the sea giving something back to her and she didn't want to leave it, but she was so cold. She got up and saw not far down along the shore a towering lighthouse. She went to it and jostled the door and it creaked open. Inside, it smelled of mildew and sea salt and warmth. She walked in and sat down on the ground. She leaned against the wall and began to sob. 

As she sobbed, she could feel the ghosts of her forgotten past leave her. The pried themselves loose from wormholes in her heart and jostled out from the pores in her skin. She could feel them leave her and she felt freer and lighter. She didn't feel any of her old memories come back, but in the lighthouse, she made a decision. She was going to decide who she was now. She may have been someone else once, but she was still someone now and she was going to start being that person. She already learned something important about this new person she was, which was she was meant to be by the sea. She gave herself a name right then and there: Mira. She gave herself a goal: to stay there, at this seaside town. To find herself a job and a place to live. To make new connections and friends in her life. To be a person again, grounded in her own identity even if she was slowly discovering what that identity was.