Brain on Fire.
Forgive me. Words are quite difficult to form on days like today. What is it about today? Well, how would I describe it? I imagine it to be quite difficult to understand if one has never experienced such a thing. No, no, it’s not a headache. Although it’s not…not a headache I suppose. For my head does ache, although not like you’d imagine.
Normally if you had a headache you might take some aspirin, drink some water, and lie down in a dark room with no noise and close your eyes. And yet, if I were to do that I would be adding fuel to the fire of the very thing that makes my head ache.
Actually adding fuel to the fire is not a terrible description of what is happening in my brain right now. Thoughts race like flames through a dry forest in my brain and it feels as if nothing can stop them. I attempt to throw distractions at them, and yet it would be the equivalent of throwing a bucket of water onto an inferno. As soon as I pour the water out, what was a bucket of water evaporates and I am left with nothing but the flames again.
I see by the look on your face that how I have described what is happening to me is not helpful in the least. Well, give me a moment. Ah. Imagine with me if you will the most intense lightning storm you have ever seen. C'mon, close your eyes and imagine a moment. The scariest and most intense of lightning storms seem to be the ones that creep up on you. One moment the sun is shining and the sky is blue and in an instant the grey clouds roll in like a stampede of rhinos through a river in the sky and the rain begins to fall. It comes down in sheets and it sounds as if thousands of pebbles have dropped from the sky. That’s when the lighting comes. It arcs across the skyline and strikes the ground, singing the very earth where it lands. It spreads cracks across the sky like some giant has swung its hammer on the horizon and has broken the very fragile glass of our atmosphere. BOOM. The sound of his hammer is in the thunder as the rain continues to come down.
Alright, you can open your eyes now. Now take that picture and that is what it is like to live inside my brain. Lightning constantly firing across my synapses. Thoughts bashing against the dome of my skull sending reverberations down my spine and into my heart. And constant questions raining down that I cannot hide from. When you die your brain shuts down and there is no activity in there, but what happens to a brain that has too much activity inside of it? Does it eventually explode under the pressure? Does it eventually roll out like a storm passing on out into the plains?
It has not been my experience so far. The storm rolls in between my ears and it increases to maximum volume throwing me into my bed and taxing my system. Complete exhaustion leads to some reprieve of sleep, but then the next morning the clouds roll in again and I am left for another day of tortuous storms.
Sometimes writing helps because I can reach inside and grab a hold of lightning bolts and hurl them onto paper. Instead of frying my brain they singe themselves onto the paper with black ink where it cannot hurt anyone any longer.
Am I okay? I have survived this long with this so I imagine I am fine. But you must forgive me but all this forming of words and coherent thoughts and sentences has been tiresome work. I think I will go lie in the storm that God has put inside of me.
