My Past is Mine: Erase a Moment, and Reality Begins to Unravel

What if something essential vanished from the world—and only you remembered it?

Eddie Tomlinson has spent months trying to accept a life stripped of something he cannot explain. Once, the world held a richness that gave shape and meaning to everything he saw. Now, no one around him even understands the word for it. Doctors dismiss him. Books deny it ever existed. Even language itself has erased all trace. He has learned to function, to work, to move forward—but never to believe the explanation he was given.

Then, on a quiet train ride through the countryside, Eddie meets a stranger who listens without ridicule. At first, the man seems merely curious. Then he begins to describe his own loss—something Eddie has never heard of, yet somehow understands. As their conversation unfolds, the fragile boundary between memory and reality begins to crack. Each man recognizes something in the other that should not be possible. And when the stranger reveals a connection to Eddie’s past, the question becomes unavoidable: if one piece of the world can vanish without a trace, what else has been erased?

“My Past is Mine” by Gerda Rhoads is a haunting exploration of memory, identity, and the terrifying possibility that reality itself can shift without warning. It captures the quiet dread of being the only person who remembers something that no longer exists—and the deeper fear of discovering you may not be who you thought you were.

Gerda Rhoads wrote only one known story, “My Past is Mine,” published in the 1950s. This rare piece stands as a striking example of mid-century speculative fiction that questions the reliability of perception and the permanence of knowledge, preserved today as a singular and unsettling artifact.