To be clear, I’m not talking about the seminal punk/reggae band, but, rather, my own brains inside my own skull. And I realize that you’re not supposed to call disabled things “bad” – and I also realize this is more of a spinal cord issue – but I have a hard time finding kindness for things that are actively hurting me and “bad brains” is more fun to say, so please forgive the faux pas.
You see, for the past few weeks, ever since getting back from Stanford, all I’ve been doing is reading Atomic Carnival submissions and playing Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom. It’s safe to say that’s all I’ve been able to do. My head has been in a perpetual fog, interspersed with crippling migraines and the occasional fleeting hour or two of clear thought.
I’d been hoping that this whole constant headache thing would have been resolved out there, or at least passed of its own accord, but, well, now I’m not so sure. This is, bare minimum, going to be a much longer process than I would care for. Because it turns out brains – and headaches, more specifically – aren’t something anyone knows fuck-all about.
When I was first going on Disability, a friend of mine, genuinely excited, referred to it as “living the dream.” He saw it as the culmination of every good slacker’s greatest hope: getting paid to do nothing. Which, in some regard, yeah, it is. Just ask any GOP-er trying to get rid of it. But the truth is you’re getting paid because all you can do is nothing. Because working a real job will ruin you.
There’s a whole lot of coming to terms with your own health and mortality and purpose wrapped up in something like that. In America, especially, you’re only ever as important as what you do, what you contribute, how much money you make. And going on Disability feels a lot like forfeiting all of that, giving up your life in a way. It’s not an easy or short process, and, along the way, you’re forced to quantify all of your physical and mental failings, to argue over and over why you can’t be a functioning member of society. And then, if you’re lucky, the government cuts you a check—one that barely covers a month’s worth of groceries—and you’re left to stew in your own existential filth.
I’ve been thinking about that turmoil a lot lately, reprocessing some of those same emotions in advance of the 48-Hour Flat Test I’m undertaking this weekend. The test—the next step in the apparently ongoing process of figuring out what the hell is going on with my perpetually befogged brain—involves lying completely flat for 48 hours and recording the changes in headache potency. This will tell the nation’s sole specialist in my particular set of skills … well, something, I guess.
A quick recap for those just joining us: I’ve had headaches for most of my adult life—I recall taking Tylenol like Tic-Tacs, six at a time, in my early 20s—but, recently, after a few years of not having constant, skullcentric pain, the headaches and the Tylenol dependency came back with a vengeance. Intracranial hypotension—or “dry brain,” as I’ve taken to calling it—was discovered and a cerebrospinal fluid leak was presumed to be the culprit. But, after several scans of varying levels of claustrophobia and a needle in my spine, no actual leak has been located.
Other than the one the doctors created, that is.
You see, during the last test, a myelogram, a lumbar puncture was performed so my dura (the outermost spinal membrane) could be flooded with contrast, in the hopes of pinpointing the CSF leak. A process that, in a hilarious irony, caused its own CSF leak. You’d think, this far into the future, we’d have a way of identifying problems without actually recreating them, but spontaneous CSF leaks predominantly occur in obese women, and good luck getting medicine to give a shit about either of those two words.
Anyway, as far as tests go, lying flat for 48 hours is super easy—I literally don’t have to get out of my own bed—but after all the Disability bullshit, not to mention all the times my health was so bad I literally couldn’t get out of my own bed, it’s dredging up a lot of old trauma and turning a fun two-day binge of Community and naps into some kind of looming threat.
But, then again, my brain is not great at rationing anxiety even when it is functioning, so I’m not sure why I’m surprised.
Earlier this month, Impossible Worlds’ second issue dropped, including my story “No More Wars Left to Fight.” It’s on Patreon behind a paywall at the moment, but trust me when I say the issue’s worth the five bucks. Stephen Wright and Chase Stowell have an eye for great stories and are putting out one of the prettiest magazines around to boot.
But back to “No More Wars …” You could probably call it military sci-fi, in that, on the surface, it’s about a former soldier dealing with life, death, and resurrection, but it’s also one of the most deeply personal stories I’ve ever written about, well, life, death, and resurrection. Specifically, the whirlwind of existential dread, doubt, and discombobulation that comes along with organ transplant and living longer than you ever thought you would.
Here’s a little snippet.
Somewhere along the way, too, his eyes had dulled. As blue as the sky above Gaea, Xo had told him once, on some shore leave a thousand ticks earlier. He wasn’t sure when the storm had moved in, when his bright eyes had turned to burnished slate.
Wasn’t the doctors that had done that.
Redston ran his hands through his paling, sandy hair, pulling it back – not long, but longer than he’d ever kept it before. Same went for the beard growing unchecked along that camera-ready jawline; gray was sneaking in there, too. He’d need to do something about that, before the ceremony.
He was getting married today.
He wasn’t supposed to be alive.
I’m going to be honest: “No More Wars Left to Fight” started as a fanfic coda to the Mass Effect trilogy before quickly becoming infused with some very real emotional reckoning of my own. Please do check it out if you can.