Migraine Brain

  One side effect of having a chronic disorder is what's known generally as "brain fog" or "mental fog." Since I suffer from migraines, I tend to call it "migraine brain." Sufferers call it everything from "fibro fog," to "lupus fog," to "chemo fog" or "chemo brain," and on. Every chronic disorder has its own version.

  I'm not a doctor, so I can't say whether we all suffer the mental fog for the same reasons, but there's no denying that chronic disorder, mental fog, and depression go hand in hand together.

  I live my life in a haze of migraine brain. Some days are worse than others. On the days when it clears up, it really does feel like the difference between a sunny day and a pea soup fog day. Suddenly I can not only see my hand in front of my face, but I can see miles and miles and miles away! And it takes no effort at all!

  I've been known to exclaim after taking certain medications, "Oh wow! I can think again!"

  In a sense, those clear brain days make the fog even harder to handle. I have memories of good days. Not abstract, foggy, hard to recall memories, but memories from a few days, a week, a month ago. Something that's practically tangible. It's the cruelty of feeling hope, and having that hope taken away again. Again and again and again and again. It's trying to balance on a teeter totter that doesn't have a regular rhythm. Eventually you're going to fall.

  One time I lost the word "dance," and all associated words. I knew I knew the words. Mentally, I could envision dancing. Swing, ballroom, ballet, modern--I could see them in my mind, but I didn't have the words. I wound up describing dancing to the person I was talking to.

  "You know, that thing, where you can do it with music, and you move your arms and legs in set patterns, or sometimes it's not set patterns, and you can do it on a stage and sometimes you wear costumes. OH! They do it in clubs, too. When you go clubbing you do it and there's a special floor for it. Some kinds have special clothes, you know the fluffy skirts and those special shoes?"

  Take the tip of the tongue phenomenon, and make it a million times worse. Tears do fall.

  I've sat there and looked at a simple addition equation and been unable to solve it (and I'm the person who took multivariable calculus in college for fun).

  I've stared at medical forms, unable to remember how to spell my own name while looking at my name printed on the sheet.

  I've listened to people talking, and heard only noise. The words should make sense, but they don't. Ever listened to a foreign language that you don't understand? Based on the intonation, you feel like you just might be able to figure out what's going on if you listen a little bit harder. Not quite there yet, listen a little harder, no, just a liiiittle harder, you can do it, listen a little bit harder! But no matter how hard you listen, comprehension is out of your reach. And this isn't a foreign language, it's your native language.

  I've poured a gallon of milk down the sink and put a dirty cereal bowl into the fridge. Yes, an entire gallon. No, I didn't realize what I'd done until I closed the door on the cereal bowl and went, "That doesn't seem right..." I still opened and closed the fridge twice before realizing what was wrong with what I was looking at.

  If I can't find my car keys, and I can't remember where they are, I've started checking the freezer. Understand that often-used items have specific places they belong. Keys go to the right of my monitor. My phone goes to the left of my monitor. And yet somehow, my keys keep winding up in the freezer! Then there was the time I found my keys in the freezer and lost my phone at the same time. An hour later, I found my phone in the freezer (and lost my keys). It'd be an amazing comedy, if it weren't happening to me.

  You know how sometimes you walk into the kitchen and can't remember why you're there? So you walk out again, and as soon as you enter the room you originally left from, you remember. So you go back to the kitchen to get what you forgot. Rinse, repeat once or twice more. Well, set that to an infinite loop. And after about ten minutes of trying, you get so frustrated that you give up, stomp off, and cry.

  Most of this probably sounds like your average absentmindedness. It's not. Take absentmindedness. Exaggerate it to dramatic proportions. Add in the desire to scream or cry when your brain stops working, and you have a small taste of what it's like.

  You're trying to run on a greased floor, and no matter how fast your feet move, you're not getting anywhere. You understand the mechanics of running. Your arms and legs move properly, but the floor won't cooperate. And to make it worse, not only is the floor greased, but the whole thing keeps tilting in random directions.

  So I'm suffering from migraine brain right now, and this whole post was brought on because I was reading micro fiction tweets and couldn't understand one of the stories. I knew that if my brain were working right, I'd understand it instantly. I read it. I reread it. I checked six or seven times to see if people had commented on it, even though it's a tweet from five (? migraine brain, remember. I might have counted wrong) months ago, and the likelihood of someone posting an explanation in the second or two between checks was pretty much nil. I had to check again though. Just in case.

  I finally sent the tweet to my bestie (<3) to have it explained to me. And when she explained it, I wanted to slam my head against the keyboard while screaming, "THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE! WHY COULD I NOT UNDERSTAND THAT?!" I wanted to cry in relief, but also to cry because I hadn't understood it until she explained it. And once she explained it, I could see that the mental process that made that tweet make sense was the same exact mental process that worked for the tweet before and the tweet after, but somehow my brain refused to make the connection.

"Lost and found."
"I've lost all hope."
"So why call us?"
"Because... Ah, I see. Well spotted. Thank you."
"It's what we're here for."

— Micro SF/F Fiction (@MicroSFF) February 26, 2016

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