Brain Fog Poetry

What is possible to write when your brain isn’t working.

Hello all,

Today’s unexpected missive is about that wonderfully frustrating condition, brain fog.

Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

This should really just be a blank page. That would be brain fog. The photos on Unsplash, for the search term fog, showed a lovely selection of views and trees and people glimpsed through fog and mist. For me, in the fog, there is nothing, no glimpses of nature, or man made structures, just blankness. I’ve tried before to describe I but failed. So this picture was better. This is me surrounded, cocooned in the fog, trying to find a way out but hindered, by more fog. Thick dense resistant fog. Waiting for it to lift is interminable.

I’ve been trying to write poems about how it feels when the brain fog descends and enshrouds me. The trouble is when that happens I can’t think. Literally, for once in my life my brain shuts up and is a vacant nothingness. Nothingness is a concept alien to me. My mind normally never stops, it is the stereotypical image of 1000 tabs constantly open, downloading data ALL the time, along with the rerunning of conversations had and to be had, songs and snippets of songs, thoughts about art, politics, my now adult children and more. So when the fog descends it’s incredibly disconcerting, frightening even. I really struggle to understand what is going on around me, to think in words let alone pictures, and to understand what people are saying to me and how to formulate a response.

So I have written before something when on the edge of a deep fog, when only in the light mist at the edges, but then it doesn’t feel right because I can’t quite grasp the fullness of the experience because I’m not in it. But when I’m in the fullness of the experience I have no way to communicate what is happening, what I’m feeling. It’s just all too hard.

I’ve got 3 or 4 different poems, that try to explain but none of them are quite right. All address different aspects. Maybe I need to work them all into one long one. But then, I’d never think of a long anything (fnar fnar - sometimes I’m so childish) whilst mired there, so that wouldn’t be right either. So I sat and waited.

This is my most recent offering, whilst sitting in the mire of nothingness, I noted each thought when I had a few moments of partial clarity, just noticing what it felt like, coming back to readjusting when my neurones decided to play. I want to expand thought 2 most, that feeling of waiting inside a moment.

---

 On a Bad Day, Inside My Brain, Thoughts

Thought 1.

Eerily empty
Notably nothing 
Blandly blank
Visually vacant
Silently sterile

Thought 2. 

I wait 
inside the day, 
Wait, 
inside the hour, the second, 
Wait
inside in-between moments
Wait
inside breaths long gaps
Wait
inside stilted heartbeat echos
Wait 
inside muted spaces still, silent, stoic.
Wait
between living and merely existing
Wait
for more.
 
Thought 3.

A monotonous snow-field whiteout
With no possibility within or beyond it,
A vast dull imposing expanse.
All thought squashed, suppressed, stifled.

Thought 4.

No matter how you look
Nothing is there,
Nothing awaits,
Nothing happens,
Time is dormant. 

Thought 5.

Wanting or wishing
Something different; futile.

---

I have recently discovered Lions Mane mushroom pills. They help A LOT. Last time I discovered something that helped it lasted for a year before side effects made it impossible to continue. I’m hoping these tablets will last a bit longer. The bright sparks they bring are genuinely life saving.

Until my next rambling, have a good one.

If you have enjoyed my ramblings I’d love for you to click the ❤️. It pleases the social algorithm, lets others know there’s something interesting here, as well as letting me know you liked it and giving me a little virtual hug. Without virtual hugs I have been know to get sad 😜. Shares are good too and a comment buoys me up even more 😁 A comment of what you liked, what you didn’t etc would be most gratefully appreciated.