
I’m a writer and a poet. My brain knows this. It wants me to tell its story, but not one about how it rules the body or how I’m more of a right-brain or left-brain kind of gal. Three frenemies run around my brain, and they’re tired of a one-person audience.
Epilepsy
One or more clusters of neurons in my brain, called heterotopias, jumped out of line in utero and, fifty years later, they can’t stop jumping. They’re tired. One of them wants a neurosurgeon to free it from its distress, and the rest, if they’ll ever remember to jump for an MRI, want to be lassoed by a responsive neurostimulator a neurosurgeon has promised to lodge under my scalp. But it’s August 2021, COVID-19’s still giving my heterotopias the finger, so they’re like, “WTF–let’s blog.”
Fibromyalgia
My brain has a lot of spunk. When the nerves in my skin send a thump, a tiny, little thump, to my brain, my brain hollers back–loudly. Its sounds reverberate through my legs, arms, and butt. My brain does this to make sure I know how much it cares. This poops it out, but no matter how tired, it still hollers. Now my brain wants to holler out to the blogosphere so it too knows how much it cares.
Depression
The neurotransmitters in my brain got an F in chemistry. Some are doing better since crash courses started popping up on YouTube, but most don’t give a shit about learning how to tango with dopamine, norepinephrine, or serotonin . My neurotransmitters care more about figures dancing or not dancing on their phone than in my grey matter. My brain hopes blogging will distract them from their mobile devices. Or make them an asset.
Me
I endure all of this with words. I prescribe them, and I monitor them. So when my frenemies insist on seeing their names first in the blog’s title, I don’t care. It’s my blog, and I like alliteration. “Julie Blogs Her Brain” it is.
I like this poem from Leonard Cohen. Feels to overlap a bit with what you’re saying:
“This is the only poem
I can read
I am the only one
can write it
I didn’t kill myself
when things went wrong
I didn’t turn
to drugs or teaching
I tried to sleep
but when I couldn’t sleep
I learned to write
I learned to write
what might be read
on nights like this
by one like me.”
—Leonard Cohen, The Only Poem
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Thank you, Alex! This means so much to me. I never expected a post of mine to be compared to a poem. This makes me smile so much
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Great intro to your blog and your brain!
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Thank you! Now let’s hope I keep up with the posting. Fingers crossed!
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