art of self diagnosis

Not recommended. But in my defense, I was the one who was there--

 

It happened when I wasn’t paying attention. It snuck up on me, bound and gagged me, and threw me in the backseat of my brain, and suddenly I wasn’t the one driving--it was something other, something not me, something alien that now had control.

I had never been hijacked before. Not in real life, or even as a joke, and never in my brain. Perhaps the euphoria of making it home for Christmas masked the takeover, so it wasn’t until five, six months later I noticed anything unusual anyway. I had been effectively locked up, and put on autopilot, and all my desire and connection to life around me had been severed and hidden in the trunk. It was locked away, and I couldn’t hear it kicking and screaming to be let out, and I couldn’t even care it was gone. I just looked out the window as images flashed past.

 The alien driver made sure I got to work on time—every day.  I worked; I came home: lather, rinse, repeat. It drove me to church, and to ballgames. It got me to everything I was supposed to get to, everything I was obligated to do. But I was detached and cold, watching from a distance, left with no desire to participate in the world that flowed around me, the world that had seemed so natural and normal previously and that now had little claim on any thought or care that I had.

Not that I had many cares. But, was I worried that foreign governments had bugged my bedroom? Yes. Was I on high alert to flee at any sign of suspicious behavior? Yes, again. Did I boil into a rage if anyone touched me, critiqued me, or sometimes, dared ask me a question?—Yes.

 None of this mattered, not to me. I was still tied up in the backseat just looking, just browsing, no help needed, thanks. Not even when I stopped making plans, not even when I forgot how to pee, not even when I realized how easy it would be for me to die, did I care that I was being driven past field upon field of blood red flags, billowing in the wind.

 It was the flashback that saved me. A random email jolted my memory like an electric current zipping through me, and while one moment I was at my desk, the next moment I was on the busy sidewalk, people, smog, bicycles, cars, lights, buildings, noise, noise, noise, pounding in my ears with each pump of my heart. Terror squeezed my chest, and I couldn’t breathe.

 And then I was back at my desk.

 For one instant, my desire to connect kicked out the taillights in the trunk and frantically waved down a passerby. For the first time in a long time, I looked at myself with a detached interest.  I knew that something was wrong with me, and I knew that I couldn’t control myself. The brain had taken over my body; I wasn’t master of my own brain, and that flashback? It couldn't be explained away.

 

I printed off a page of symptoms and took it home to my mother.

 Can someone be certain something is wrong without being diagnosed? If a tree falls with no one around, is there a sound?

 

What if a tree falls and there is no lumberjack to chainsaw it into logs and haul it down the mountain? The log becomes part of the forest, rot into nutrients into foliage.  Or maybe it becomes fodder for wildfire. Either way, it's change; it's a natural passage from one state to another.

 

And so I'm back in the driver's seat. More aware, more wary. Also more compassionate to others in distress. If my alien could hide in the open, so could another person's demons. We aren't built to go through that alone.