In my old life, my life before I knew about death, I thought about everything all the time. It’s not unique – in fact it’s probably a very modern way for a brain to operate: just burning through cycles of worry and anticipation and regretting things you did last weekmonthyeardecade and did I do that thing for work and thinking so quickly you can’t even think a whole paragraph. Just fragments of an internal monologue.
But a couple of weeks ago I was walking my dogs and realized I wasn’t thinking at all. I was observing the sounds of spring struggling to arrive and smiling at my dogs, but no hellish loop of obsessive thinking. Just observations and emptiness.
Did this happen because of the neurotoxic side effects from TILs? Or is it all the yoga I’ve been doing because I can’t work out hard yet? Or is this what happens when you find out that most of the things you thought mattered, don’t matter? And that the actual things that you have to think about are your health, your family, and your friends? I thought that crazy brain was just how I was made, that I arrived on the planet this way.
It’s hard to make a new life when everything has been wiped away, even the way your brain functions. I’m grateful not to have any endless cycle of worries anymore but it’s a little lonely too. And it’s not very funny at all.