The shock of amnesia: 'I woke in the wrong house. I thought I was 15.'

Naomi Jacobs went to sleep as a 32-year-old single mother, and woke up the next morning believing she was a 15-year-old school girl. As far as she was concerned, it was 1992. John Major was Prime Minister in the UK, and the internet, DVDs and reality TV didn’t exist. She didn’t know it but she had dissociative amnesia. In this extract from her recently released memoir I Woke Up in the Future she describes in vivid detail the moment she woke up from a disturbing nightmare – and found herself in another.

Clutching my chest, furiously grabbing for air, I sat up in bed. I couldn’t breathe. Gulping down sobs, I tried to scream.

Nothing came.

There was a small window opposite the bed. I looked up at it, willing my breathing to calm. The sun shone cheerfully through the curtains, illuminating the purple flowers covering them. Purple flowers? I closed my eyes. ‘S’okay, Nay, it’s just a dream,’ I said out loud. I grabbed my throat. My voice sounded … weird, different; hoarse and deep. Like a grown-up’s. I opened my eyes and scanned the room, turning my head slowly to the left and then to the right. Nothing. I recognised nothing.

I looked down at my body.The pyjama top I was wearing was drenched with sweat. I tried to think and my head started to hurt. This wasn’t my bunk bed. Where was my Marilyn Monroe duvet cover? This wasn’t the bedroom I shared with my sister. Where was she? Where was Simone? I closed my eyes again.

‘I must be dreaming,’ I said to the empty room. My voice again; it sounded so strange. I jumped out of the weirdly large bed. Had it kidnapped me in my sleep and brought me to this strange place? I looked around at the room. It was dismal and grey. There was no carpet on the floor, just bare boards, and the walls had been stripped down to bare grey plaster. It looked almost like a prison.

 I walked slowly out of the room into the hallway, hoping I would see something familiar. The house felt empty.

‘Hello,’ I called out.

To the left of me was a closed bedroom door but in front of me was a bathroom; the door was ajar. I pushed it open. No one was in there and I didn’t recognise anything inside. There was a mirror above the sink. Maybe, I thought, if I see my reflection I will know that I am still dreaming and wake up. It took a slow second, but when my mouth dropped open in horror, I grabbed my face and screamed, "NO! Oh my God, oh my God oh my God oh my God ... I’m ... I’m ... I’m OLD!!"

I was old.

Shock made me back away from the mirror. I burst into tears and dropped to the floor. My brain tried to make sense of the face I had just seen, asking what was with the lines? The dark circles under my eyes and the short hair? No, no, it wasn’t me. I jumped up from the floor and stared at the face again. "This isn’t me!" I shouted at it. I ran back into the bedroom, shaken by what I had seen. I felt a cold panic box its way into my mind, punching tiny holes of anxiety into my brain. Dread found its place. Where was my sister? I felt the sudden urge to find her.

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Maybe she was in the living room. Panicked, I sped downstairs and stormed into an unfamiliar kitchen. Nothing. I ran back into the living room. No one. I flew back upstairs and, avoiding the other closed door down the small hallway, I rushed into the bedroom and flung open the wardrobe doors, looking for one of my smeghead friends maybe, who would yell, ‘Surprise!’ and keel over laughing at the crap joke she was playing.

"Oh. My. Dayz," I gasped.

The colours were unbelievable: blues, purples, yellows, but ... like ... different. Clothes I would never wear. "This isn’t my house." I shook my head at them. I spun around. "This isn’t my room ... This is NOT my life. NO!" I ran back into the bathroom and looked at the face again."‘This isn’t me"’ I shouted back at it. Dizzy, I hit the floor. My body curled up into a ball and I started to cry again. I tried to find something to focus my mind on, anything, and then I remembered that I had seen a picture of my sister downstairs. But I didn’t get up; I just lay there, crying, moaning, and mumbling.

After lying there for what felt like ages, I realized that I, Smeghead, wasn’t dreaming. This was real; I was real. I had woken up in a bed I didn’t know, a room I didn’t recognise, and a house that wasn’t mine. And then I heard music in the distance, a song being sung. I crawled across the bathroom floor and back into the bedroom while a woman sang something about bleeding or breathing; no, it was definitely bleeding, yes, bleeding love. The music was coming from something on the bedside cabinet.

It kept stopping and starting and stopping again; but there was no radio, no tape deck, just a small black object shaking violently across the top. I jumped back, almost falling over myself. The sound hurt my ears and as I cautiously picked it up, the word ‘Simone’ flashed in black letters. "Simone?" I asked it. Simone! It was my sister; it had to be. She was the only Simone I knew. I turned the strange object over and over, pressing hard plastic. There were no buttons. I put it up to my mouth and called Simone’s name, hoping she would somehow hear me. The flashing, the music and the vibrating stopped. "Where are the frickin’ buttons?" I screamed at it, and a great sense of inadequacy produced even more tears. I felt defeated. "Three missed calls" it now read.

"What the ...? This, like ... is this a phone?"

I dropped the phone on the floor, ran down the stairs to the front door, and stepped outside. The houses opposite stared at me; their windows looked like laughing eyes. Frantically, I scanned the tree-lined road. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I so knew this wasn’t Wolverhampton. This wasn’t my home town. I didn’t live here. A woman walking a small white dog passed the hedge separating the front garden from the road and smiled at me. I turned away. I must have looked such a div standing in the garden in my pyjamas. I ran back into the house, slammed the door shut and stood facing the stairs.

My heart was thundering in my chest. I closed my eyes and counted to 10 and as my breathing slowed down, I grabbed my forehead with both hands. "Come on, Nay." I took another deep breath. "You’re all right, girl. Everything’s gonna be okay; you just need to chill the smeg out."

Through deep breaths and several counts of 10, I talked myself into some semblance of calm. For the first time, I saw the different-sized photos hanging on the walls on either side of the stairs. I started with the ones closest to me, pictures of this chubby baby with a cute smile and a head of brown kiss curls. My brain was saying, 'Leo', but I didn’t know who he was.

The next set of frames answered my question – they showed me but older, me smiling back with a chubby toddler on my lap. Was this really me? Was this child mine? Is this the future?

Trying to think instantly caused a bright light to flash in front of my eyes and a stabbing pain to shoot through my head. I took another deep breath. The pain subsided and I climbed two more steps. The next picture was of Simone proudly holding a white scroll, a black gown draped over her shoulders, a black cap on her head. "You went to uni? When did this happen?" I asked the photo. Maybe I was in my sister’s house, I thought.

I looked at the rest of the pictures, more pictures of this child I instinctively knew was called Leo. He grew with each photograph and the last one was a black-and-white one of him holding a skateboard. The smile, the eyes ... it was like looking at a mini version of me. Maybe he’s my brother? I wondered if my mum had had another kid.

I searched the other pictures to see if there was any hint of his mum; no, if he wasn’t with me, he was on his own. Photographs of my sister sat next to pictures of my father. I stood staring at his face in shock. Was it really him? In one of the photographs he was with another child I didn’t recognise. He was lighter in skin tone, with straw-blond hair, and he looked a bit like Simone.

"What year is this?" I asked the pictures. Nothing, no answer. I stepped backwards down the stairs and made my way into the living room, desperately trying to remember something. A black cordless phone sat near the television and as soon as I looked at it, a number popped into my head. I continued to pace, stopped, looked back at the phone and heard the number again. 7768339, this time with a name: Katie. "Katie?" I asked the phone.

The number came to me again. 7768339, Katie. It was a strange-looking phone with no pull-out aerial and it had an orange screen, but every time I looked at it, I kept getting the same name and number. 7768339, Katie.

Katie from school? The only way to find out was to press the numbers. It rang about four times and then someone answered. "Hello," a soft, high-pitched voice sang into the phone. "Hello," I whispered. "Is that you, Kate?" "Oh, hiya, babe. I was just about to call you. Did you manage to sleep last night?"

She knew me. "Katie?" I asked again.

This wasn’t my friend from school. This Katie sounded as old as my mum and like she had just stepped off Coronation Street. "Yeah." She went quiet for a moment.

"What’s up, hun? Are you okay?" The gates opened, allowing a flash flood of tears.

"Oh my God," I sobbed. "I don’t know who you are. I don’t know where I am and this number kept repeating over and over in my head so I called you, and it’s not you. And I don’t know what to do and I don’t know where I ... and I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know what’s happened to my face." "Your face? What’s happened to your face?"

The strange woman’s voice went up an octave. "IT’S OLD!" I began to cry again.

"What?" She laughed and then went silent again. "Naomi, what’s wrong? Erm, okay, okay, babe, listen to me, take a deep breath." I sobbed some more; this definitely wasn’t Katie from school. "But I don’t know you," I managed. "Right, okay, listen to me," she said in a deliberately calm voice. "Go into the kitchen, switch the kettle on and make yourself a cup of coffee." "C ... coffee?"

I stammered. "Ugh, gross."

She went quiet again. "Hello?"

I walked into the kitchen anyway, searched for the kettle, and switched it on.

"Erm, I’m here, babe.

"Listen, Gerald’s getting the car out the garage, and we’ll be round in five minutes. Have you found the kettle?" "Hmm." I opened up the cupboard in front of me. A range of coffees and boxes of herbal teas stood on display. "Right, make yourself a cuppa. You like herbal teas, don’t you?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Okay, right. Make yourself a tea, and have a cigarette, and we’ll be round in a bit."

"Cigarette? Rank! I sooooo don’t smoke."

The silence was so long, I thought she had hung up. Had I said something wrong?

I started to cry again. "I don’t know jack about anything. I don’t know what I’m doing here."

"It’s okay. Right, right, just ... just breathe and ... and drink your tea. I’m coming round, okay?"

"Okay." I put the phone down.

The fresh minty smell of the tea kinda reminded me of my stepfather, Joseph. It was his favourite tea and he used to slurp it loudly knowing it would make me laugh. I began to wonder why there were no pictures of him on the wall, or of my mum. Where was everybody? The warmth of the tea comforted me.

As I held the cup between my hands, I decided I liked the kitchen. The bright orange and yellow walls held pictures painted by a child – probably, I thought, the one from the photographs. Certificates and postcards surrounded the artwork. On the white door of one of the cupboards was an Irish blessing, a picture of a lone castle with nothing but blue skies, green hills and brown boulders of rock around it. Above the castle were the words:

When times are hard
May your heart never
Turn to stone.
When shadows
Fall on you
Remember,
You never walk alone.

Everything seemed to, like, for a minute ... chill. I needed to let go of the sheer terror of what I was experiencing. The blessing gave me a moment of freedom from the deep shudders of panic that kept sending massive waves of distress through my body, forcing it to flood with adrenaline, making me want to run. I was exhausted. So I let go of the urgent need to know where, when and who I was. In that moment, I was sure I would eventually find my way home, back to 1992 and out of this nightmare.

The doorbell rang. I took a deep breath. Once I opened that door, I would be faced with yet more of the unknown. I hadn’t a clue what was happening. But I knew two things for sure:

1. I was 15 years old.
2. I had woken up in the future.

This is an extract from I Woke Up in the Future by Naomi Jacobs, published by Pan Macmillan, RRP $32.99. You can purchase it here.

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