The Things We Couldn't Forget

Prologue

My name is Misery. 

No, my parents didn't name me that. However, they did name me Missouri, which in my humble opinion is not much better.

My mom saw a movie, or read a book, about a couple who named all of their children after the state, or maybe it was the city, they were conceived in. She thought it was the cutest thing she'd ever heard.

I can still hear her telling me the story in my head, like I'm still sitting in the back of our family's clunky old Station Wagon.

"Stop you're crying, now." She told me while I wiped snot and tears into the sleeve of my hoodie. "Your name is special and unique, just like you are, little bug."

I'd started crying harder.

"Not helping, Ma." My brother, Dallas, had said, trying to give me a friendly nudge of his shoulder but I ignored him all together.

"As soon as I saw that movie, or maybe I read it in a book, who can rememberer anymore," her voice dripped with southern honey, even after all these years since she'd moved away from Alabama to marry Dad and move to Montana. "I knew I was gonna do that same thing with my babies when I had em."

"It's true," Dad chimed in from the passenger seat. "Told me right then and there."

"Now your brother was easier, yes, he got a city in Texas because we flew to Dallas to visit one of your dad's old college buddies." Dallas and I shared a disgusted look. We both knew the implications being made here about our parents banging in Dallas, likely on the couch of Dad's buddy from college. She'd just kept going though. "You, however, were harder to lock down."

I roll my eyes even now at her causally blowing off the fact that they gave me the worst name a child can have.

"Yep," Dad had looked over at Mom, pushing his big coke bottle glasses back up on his long straight nose. He smiled at her and she turned to smile at him, her perfect white teeth encased by glossy fire red lipstick painted lips. "We sure had a good time road-tripping through Missouri those four days." Their grins widened and my cheeks had reddened.

"So just because you couldn't remember which specific town you guys boinked in, I get the name Missouri?" I hadn't meant to shout, but come on. Preteen me was over the nonchalant way they gave my brother a perfectly normal name, while I got this.

My parents name's are John and Susan for Christ's sake.

"Just be happy you weren't conceived in Rhode Island when we went for that festival." Dad laughed, reaching over to pat Mom's knee. I hated how lovey and cheesy and perfect they both were. My brother too.

"I hate this family!" I'd shouted that day.

They'd ignored my outburst and Dallas had yet again bumped my shoulder in the back seat of that dirty leather and gasoline smelling clunker of a car.

Everyone went on smiling and acting like me getting the nickname Misery before I was even in elementary school was just fine and dandy.

It's funny the things you remember.

There are so many things that happen to us all every single day, for every single hour, of our entire lives. And somehow, amazingly, among all of those multitude of moments, the brain picks and chooses what to hold onto, and what to forget.

If only we had access to that sort of power. If I could just pull up an app on my phone and sort through all of my memories I've been storing my entire life and decided for myself, with the click of a button, what's to keep, and what's to forget.

I think how much easier my life would be right now. If I didn't have to carry with me the weight of everything I can't escape no matter how far away from Faulkner Montana I run. I wish I could just send it all to another folder at least, somewhere I could ignore it all as if it never existed in the first place.

But now, much like the name I'm stuck with, I don't get to pick and choose. I'm stuck with every bad memory, every good memory, every heart shattering and life altering memory. Every bit of it is stuck to me like a sad patchwork of a life gone wrong from the moment I was born into this dark and unforgiving world.

What makes me laugh when I think back to this conversation in the back of my family car as I ride with my beautifully quirky parents and my broody but dependable brother, is that I remember that being a moment I was so sad. So sad I was sure nothing could ever be worse than being a twelve year old girl who everyone called Misery.

I remember feeling convinced if only I had a different name, the rest of my life would be golden. I could do all of the things I was too afraid to do if I had a different name. I could be a whole new version of me, if only I wasn't stuck with this name. Nothing could bring me down, as long as I wasn't Misery anymore.

It's easy to believe the worst thing in your life is your name when you're a kid who the world hasn't actually decided to mess with yet.

Every single time this particular memory creeps into my psyche, I cringe, physically reacting even now to how stupid I was back then.

If only I could go back, shake that little girl's shoulders and scream at her. "You better buck up, Kid! You think you have it bad now? Just wait! Just wait!" I continue to shake childhood me. "You think being called Misery is the worst thing you can ever be called?" I'd laugh in my own little still chubby face.

I hadn't known it back then, back when Misery was my name and I wallowed in it. I had no idea that soon, only a few years later, I'd beg to be called just Misery again.

Misery was so much better than the moniker I got stuck with later.

Now, every single time I tell someone my name, I see it. It's palpable, the way I can feel and see the changes. Eyes go wide, and mouths pop into little round O shapes.

"Missouri Jacobs?" They always say, usually followed by a hand clutching their necks.

I watch as the recognition really settles in, and then they say it.

"You're John Jacobs' daughter."

John Jacobs, notoriously known serial killer.

And I just thought I knew a thing or two about Misery.