Welcome to the inside of my head

There’s an old saw about computers that they only truly show how important they are when they break down. Do you realise how important your brain is, not just as food for zombies, but for all the gear that you do a million times a day without conscious effort? You may not think about it all that much, but when something goes wrong with that few pounds of grey goop, fuck me do you find out in a hurry how important it is.

Take talking, for instance. Somehow, in a conversation, you’re hearing the other person’s words, processing the sentences, then decoding what might be underneath what they’re saying, all the while formulating your own response.

Then, with words and concepts and images flying through your mind, you mentally put together the sentences and your own words come out, self-editing (unless you’re me and have a defective self editing process) as you listen to them. But you’re not thinking about any of this (unless you’re six pints in and seeing double, and having trouble with “exactly”), your brain just does it for you. It’s a hell of a trip when it stops.

One morning, many years ago, I was doing my usual get out of bed, go to work thing. I lived alone, so there was no conversation to be had (the shouting at the radio thing only started in my thirties). Completely uneventful morning, until I got to the train station and went to buy a ticket from the guy in the booth (that tells you how long ago it was!!).

Coins in hand, I waited in line. When I got to the front of the queue, the booth guy looked at me, I opened my mouth and said “Errggmmff”. My inner monologue should have said something witty at this point, like “whoah, that’s not right!” But I didn’t have one. All I had was the instinct to try again.

“Errrgggmmffthhhhh”…

Four attempts later, and some really fucking strange looks from the booth dude, I pointed to the ticket I needed, handed over the money (correct change, thank God), and walked out onto the platform. After a minute or so of Errgmmffthing at people who earnestly started studying their toes or scurrying away, my inner monologue recovered enough to say “Go home, dude!”, which I promptly did.

All kinds of scans and tests and fuckloads of money revealed exactly nothing wrong, and no explanation as to what it could’ve been. It’s never happened again, thankfully. If I’m going to go round mumbling at people it’ll be MY choice, thank you very much; I’ll be eighty years old, and in my pyjamas, and lovelywife will be in tow, wearing a nightie and thigh boots.

This past week or so, I’ve been blessed with a few pretty wonderful migraines. Last Thursday night I went to bed sober and well-rested, no more work stress than usual, and at a reasonable hour. At two am I woke up with a telephone pole through my right temple, crushing my eye, my sinuses and my tongue. I staggered to the kitchen and found some Panadeine, then lay in bed for the next hour whimpering and curled up in a ball.

For those of you who don’t get them, there is no pain like a migraine. You suffer hyper-photosensitivity, and have to lie in a darkened room with a cool damp cloth over your eyes because any kind of light echoes through your skull like Slipknot’s drummer on meth. Of course, you can’t escape the pretty coloured blobs of light dancing around inside your eyes, and they make you nauseous. Sentences are almost impossible, and standing up or walking around is just plain silly.

But it’s the terror that gets me. Why terror? A migraine is caused by some fucked-up-edness of blood vessels IN YOUR BRAIN. Think about that. IT MIGHT EXPLODE, DAMN YOU!!!!

I actually woke lovelywife up that night and said it was probably just a migraine but I’d never had one this bad, and it might be an aneurism, so I just want to say Goodbye and I Love You and stuff because I may die any time in the next two minutes. She patted me for a bit and then was soothed back to sleep by my rhythmic whimpering.

So, I didn’t die, and I was actually OK (I thought) for work the next day. Hah! Without going into details, I had to negotiate and coordinate a building full of people with other people who were trying to coordinate their parts of the building, and we had to do it together. It all would have fallen into a screaming heap if I didn’t have a few brilliant, hard-working colleagues who threw themselves into the breach and carried the whole mess along to a better than expected conclusion.

By the end of the day I’d realised that I was only functioning at about 80% capacity, and while that still left me more intelligent than 95% of humanity, it wasn’t pleasant.

I wasn’t actually in any pain, but I had a disturbing echo of the night before bouncing around, reminding me of it. Something in that was affecting my ability to reason and to organise, and it had such an affect on my mood and verbal ability that my workmates, who long ago stopped being surprised by me, actually noticed.

So I haven’t been back at work, properly, in the week and a half since. For all that time, I’ve been either whimpering in pain, away with the codeine fairies, or just lying around feeling dumb. The consolation in all this is that I know it’s only pain, and it will eventually stop.

And the really good thing about it is I now have some insight into how stupid people’s brains work. More ammunition, more power, more ways to manipulate them. Eeeeexcellent……

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