Remember the old slogan we used to hear all the time, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste?" (I hate putting the question mark inside the quotes, but I just can't bring myself to type it backwards.) I think my first indication that something was seriously wrong with me, years and years ago, was when I realized that I no longer had control over my own mind. When I was a teenager, I took great pride in being one of the smartest kids in my school. I knew it, and I wasn't going to let anyone miss it. I went to all the interscholastic meets, I got straight As, I always read, wrote, and spoke way above my grade level. And then, sometime after the very serious, extended mononucleosis experience, the way my mind worked started to change. I got much lazier in my thinking. I struggled in college, even in classes that should have come to me as easily as breathing. (When I say "struggled," I mean that I got out with roughly a 3.1 GPA, which at the time was shameful to me.) I was in my twenties when I first caught myself tripping over words when I talked. It took my natural shyness on the phone up several notches to an all-out, anxiety-inducing panic. I knew I'd lose words and drop off conversations, and without seeing people in person, I couldn't use visual clues to keep myself in the right sentences. Over the years, focusing on work became harder, and I eventually even struggled with following everything my fast-talking daughters tried to tell me. It was probably 2005 when I can recall having a total meltdown, trying to explain through my tears to my husband that I didn't feel like I owned my own brain anymore. He honestly had no concept of what I was telling him, and I remember him being annoyed with me, assuming that it was more a case of learned helplessness, that I was trying to get out of some mundane clerical task.
When I went on my strict gluten-free and eventually grain-free diet, one of the main things I hoped to accomplish was to lose the "brain fog" that most Wheat Belly followers manage to lose. For a while, it seemed like it was working. I definitely reduced the number of migraines I was having, and I managed to convince myself that my clarity of thought was returning as well. Maybe I was just in one of the remission phases, and I'm in an extended flare period now. But I feel like I'm losing focus more than ever now. Three times I faced the same check box in one of the commonly used contracts that I was preparing for my current clients, and three times I panicked at what I was supposed to do with it. I guessed wrong once, asked the boss the second time but wasn't where I could take notes, and the third time I looked at this same simple check box, I ended up texting a coworker, because I was too embarrassed to admit to the boss that I couldn't remember what he had told me. It was such a simple thing, but because it had so much riding on it (I'm too afraid of making a mistake on the contracts, if it means it costs me money, turns a client against me, or worst of all, gets me disciplined by the regulatory agency) I panicked at the sight of it. I felt like someone was squeezing my brain, preventing the right answer from working its way out from wherever it was stored in there.
I hate feeling stupid. I hate feeling flummoxed. I hate that there are groups of people who are so surprised on those few occasions when they heard me say intelligent things like I used to, that they stared at me dumbfounded, their expressions saying, "You're just a fluff-headed monkey. How the hell do you know anything about this [science/history/mathematics/etc] thing?" I resorted to writing as much communication as I can, so I have a chance to pause and find the right words, and no one thinks any less of me. I can edit and make sure I'm saying what I need to, and not fight the brain-mouth barrier to get the right words out. It's not the most ideal action plan, but now that email and text are most people's preferred communication formats, I have hope that it will get me through the rest of my life.
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