Why My Brain Asked Me to Blog It

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.