A normal freelance writer’s life is not normal. First of all, a normal freelance writer likely does not exist. Leave alone a normal life. You’re sentenced to near death by a hundred rejections. Followed by a million cuts.
I’m grateful to be alive. More grateful, perhaps than many, since my life ended in 2006. My first life, that is. This is my second life, complete with my second brain — but without my former mind.
I used to have a map in my head, which means it was a damned tiny map, lodged between ears. My GPS used to pinpoint my location. Now it says “You are not here.” That’s all it says all the time. “You are not here.” This is called brain damage. Mine was caused by a drunk with a truck.
I am asked something simple. My adrenaline kicks in, my breathing gets faster, my heart rate gets faster, I start to sweat. I have “frontotemporal lobar degeneration,” “frequent phonetic breakdowns,” plus “articulatory groping and phonetic disintegration.”
That means I can’t name things. It might be a rock, a rose, a dress. A chair, a house, a mouse, a mess. Images I’m shown seem pointillist, kaleidoscopic, or worse, nameless, place-less and pointless, too. Distant objects zoom in and out. So do objects close at hand.
Not long ago, my PC crashed. But thankfully there was a backup for that. Sadly, there was no backup for my brain, not on Google or anywhere else. Today is a good time to start increasing your brain health. So is tomorrow, or any day, in fact. I also suggest wearing a helmet at all times or otherwise trying to protect your head.
I remain very grateful to you for your comments and your readership.
Part of your triumph, Judith, is that you are clearly, in your impeccable prose, ably describing the nearly indescribable. The very symptoms you describe also make it very, very hard to set words down to explain to the reader what you are experiencing in that moment. Yet you have done it.