Sometimes I have a phonetic breakdown
And go back and forth at once
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. Then — in an instant — it said, “You are not here.” That’s all it said all the time. “You are not here.”
I was asked something simple. My adrenaline kicked in, my breathing got faster, my heart rate got faster, I started to sweat. I had “frontotemporal lobar degeneration,” “frequent phonetic breakdowns,” plus “articulatory groping and phonetic disintegration.”
That means I couldn’t name things. It might be a rock, a rose, a dress. A chair, a house, a mouse, a mess. Images I was shown seemed too big, too small, too fast, too slow. Also nameless, place-less and pointless, too.
Distant objects zoomed in and out. So did objects close at hand. This was called brain damage. Mine was caused by a drunk with a truck. My job was to get better — and hell, that’s been a big job and a big adventure.
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.