I was never a good speaking communicator. Writing is where my world opens up and thoughts spread like petals on a spring flower.
Despite being verbally challenged, the one thing I could always rely on was my brainpower. Since Howard died, I think my brain broke and got put back together incorrectly. Maybe that’s happened to you? Have you ever had a life event that just shattered everything you knew about the world and you felt like your brain broke in that moment, and then when it was put back together, it was put back differently?
That’s my experience. At 8:07 pm on 8/20/2021 my brain broke. Then, it slowly pieced itself back together. It took months, but when I came out of the fog I discovered that the pieces of brain hadn’t fit back together properly. I found myself not knowing who I am or what I’m doing. Not in a broken psychological way, because I’ve been through two great therapists, and they agree that I’m fine. I maintained that they can’t fix the main thing that is wrong with me: grief.
It’s not a mental disorder that seized my brain. I feel as if I changed in a fundamental way. It’s where I’d been taken out of the present realm and put into another dimension, just a click off the normal one. Like I was still part of the dimension that everyone else inhabited, but I was a shade removed. Not that they were sped up, like those montages where the person is sitting still and people around them move at lightning speed. No, not that.
It’s more like things are unexpected. One would expect a penny to beat the feather to the floor, but sometimes for me, a penny takes more time. Things are just a click off kilter. My friends and I are still living in the same universe, only mine isn’t quite the same as theirs.
And yet I know it’s not the world that’s changed, but it’s me.
I’m me, but I’m not me.
I’ve nearly become a different person. I’m not sure I like her, but then again, I don’t know her very well. We’ve only just met.
I definitely don’t react the same ways to things as I used to do. I don’t act the same or process information the same. It’s like the pathways were mixed up and information now travels different routes and discovers different memories and emotions along the way. I see my friends living their lives and I think to myself, I used to belong there with them. I used to interact with them and connect with them there, in familiar ways and familiar patterns.
But, I’m not there, I’m somewhere else. I’m a shade different and sometimes it’s a millimeter and sometimes it’s a chasm, but it’s different.