Showing posts with label brain fog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label brain fog. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

for·ti·tude

/ˈfôrtiˌto͞od/

Noun
Courage in pain or adversity: “she endured her illness with great fortitude”.

I was writing an email to my father and out popped the word “fortitude”.  “Wish I had the fortitude” I wrote.  I know what it means but I looked it up anyway. Its definition pops out AT ME.  (see above)  And I can’t help thinking it’s not a coincidence.  I’m not enduring my illness with any for·ti·tude  at all and I should be.  I am more of an unorganized mess-lately hit with that dreaded brain fog forgetting what I’m doing and what I’m saying, names, places, faces, details.  Not enough of a help to my family.  I need to step up higher.  My husband is tired.  My son needs my help.  

Disability hearing is coming up in September.  The board of education kicked back my dismissed Sallie Mae school loans because my GP is a DO.  Go figure.  Alot going on and alot coming up.  My foot surgery seems failed and I will likely need two more, one to kill the other side of the nerve and one to take the toe.  The familiar pain has returned along with my unsettledness & has run off with my for·ti·tude.
Tomorrow is another day.  Tally Ho!

Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Brain Fog

Feels like life is moving but I'm standing still..my brain just musing passively...parusing nothing.

Not a good time to make decisions although I can still laugh at jokes
which are all I want to hear.  The rest is mumbojumbo.

Someone else make the coffee, fix the dinner, make the drinks.  I can only do what you put in front of me.  Even then don't expect my best.

My get up and go has got up and went
And left what you see here.  A shell.  Inside is squishy jelly.  No brain cells here.

Just an ameba.  The most basic form of life.  My shell.  My armor. 
Guarding nothing.  Nothing but squishy jelly.  What a joke.

I'm not laughing, though I'd like to be.  Not smiling, though I'd like to be.  Not feeling, though I'd like to be.  Empty.  So empty.

Such is brain fog.  I didn't lose my keys.  I didn't forget to feed the dog and cat.  I don't know what I forgot...such is real confusion.  To have to put my day plan into others to take the first move.  My moves are secondary.  Time to jump up?  Just say so.  I can do that much.

There's a big open space like a field in my mind
And I'm on it grazing.  Nothing else.  The heat of the sun hits my back and feels good while it brightens up my skin.  The blue sky goes on forever.
I'm but a speck in a vast wilderness of green prairies and flatlands
The picture perfect clouds roll slowly by my emptiness
They all look the same.  Where is my voice?  My constitution? 
Why is my spirit so lost?

I'll have to ask the fog itself.  Release me and give me back my thoughts, I say.
They're mine and only for me.  What good are they to you?  Only I can turn them into meaningful words and actions.

Such is brain fog.

The windows in my apartment are covered not once but twice with blackout drapes.  No sun, yet the artificial light luminates the room enough for me to be fooled into thinking it's daytime.  What else is fooling me besides the light?

The tv chatters, the phone rings, the alarm goes off, the printer hums and the dog barks.  Even the keyboard clicks as the words hit the page, yet my mind is quiet.  Someone else attends to it.  All I can do is watch.

I'll jump when you tell me.  Put the words in front of me so I can reach them and I'll press the keys.  Free my entrapment, break the armor, expose the jelly and the joke.  I can face them.  At least I have that function.  That is true spirit.  That is my lifeblood.  That is what is left when the rest gets foggy.   My essence is safe. 
The fog is only a cloak hiding behind my double black out drapes.  It is I who fool the fog with my artificial  light.  I decide to make it daytime and my fingers press the keys with their orders from the very brain that thought it was incapable just a moment ago. 
The clouds now take shapes along the skyline and the blueness of the afternoon sky overwhelms my senses. 
Such is brain fog lifted.