The Mind is a Lonely Place for Dying

It’s happening to me again.

I’m missing time, coming back to my senses in the middle of acts I’m already committing without any memory of having intention to do them.

No, I’m not some serial killer. This isn’t some-Dark Half ripoff. There is no other personality.

It’s me. Just me. But without the tape running.

I started noticing it about a year ago. I began feeling that pressure I used to feel building in my head, the kind that would trickle down into the back of my throat — like a hand reaching from the rafters gripping around my neck, ready to yank it up clear off of the tissue connecting it to the rest of me.

Before now, I’d last felt it when I was 17.

I remember clearly one day pulling out of my parents’ driveway in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I backed out onto the street, moved the car from reverse into drive, and straightened it out as I pulled forward.

The next moment, my arms were turning the wheel, pulling the car into the driveway of my then-girlfriend’s house in Trevor, about a 30-minute drive away from where I started.

Thirty minutes I couldn’t remember even one moment of, and no, I wasn’t drunk or using at the time.

After a few more similar experiences, I went to the doctor to get some tests done. Ever the drama queen, I thought I must have a tumor or something. I was already running through drafts of my deathbed speeches to my girlfriend, my brothers, my parents, etc., when my eyes were averted from the carpet — one with the design of an animated city probably crafted circa 1997, complete with bulbous cars and blocky buildings — by the sound of my name.

Looking up I saw a nurse standing there waiting for me, and I figured it was time to get answers.

Except it wasn’t.

Scans and tests later, all I knew was this: whatever it was, it was — as the doctor would tell me — psychosomatic. There was nothing they could really do for me. I was doing it to myself, internally, beyond my own ability to detect the subconscious betrayal.

All I knew was — or at least how I put it to myself at that time — I was a crazy person. I had a broken brain that was falling apart, and there was nothing that I could do to fix it.

I know now that was a very defeatist view, but my favorite authors and artists all killed themselves in one way or another so I’m not exactly predisposed to a sunny disposition.

I found a temporary solution, though. I couldn’t stop my mind from being overactive. Its natural state is to be flooded with more thoughts than I have the energy to recount — more than I ever have the energy or even the desire to list.

But I could slow down the process.

Insert at least a solid 10 years of alcoholism, drug abuse and eventual sobriety for nearly 8 years after that and you’re up to speed on where I am today.

I’m 35, and while the pressure in my head returned about a year ago, I hadn’t had a blackout that wasn’t caused by alcohol since I was 17.

Until a few months ago.

It started with little things.

I kept walking into rooms and forgetting why I was in them, which is natural. Everyone does that.

But then, I started forgetting what day it was too many days in a row. Or not remembering to take my medication until I was in the middle of withdrawals from already being a day or two without them.

I wish that was the worst of it.

However, I’m starting to get lost.

No, not in that cute or ditzy or comical way of just not having a good time with directions.

I mean, I’ll be driving and then — out of nowhere — all of my memory of the street I’m on, the city I’m in or where I’m going will disappear without a trace.

And there I am in the middle of nowhere, this foreign land that I can’t remember ever seeing before in my entire life, and I’m heading somewhere I can’t recall.

The first time it happened it only lasted a few seconds. Yeah, it was a bit alarming, but I kind of laughed it off as just a moment of really strong daydreaming.

And I told myself that again the second time. And the third time. And the fourth. And so on.

Until about a week ago.

I was driving around Racine — the city I was literally born and raised in — and it happened. For the life of me, I can’t even remember now what street it was. But my memory of my entire hometown disappeared.

And again, I was completely lost among unfamiliar houses and street signs that meant nothing to me.

But this time it didn’t just last a few seconds.

It lasted an agonizing minute before I started coming back around again. The whole time panic swelled up from my heart into my throat, creating so much pressure that I thought it would push my eyes out of my skull any second.

Then, it broke.

Things started becoming normal again, familiar.

I was myself again.

However, I’m terrified by a simple question that the whole experience left in my head.

It came as a whisper as I was looking down at my shaking hands and repeating to myself, “You’re alright, Kid. You’re back. You’re alright.”

In that moment, the whisper simply asked, “What happens if you don’t come back next time?”

Now, every time I start to feel any pressure building in my head or I realize that I’ve forgotten anything or even just get in my car, the hiss of those words echoes in the background of the multitude of important and completely unimportant thoughts that enter and leave my mind at an excessive rate every day.

Because I don’t have an answer.

What is anyone without the memories that shaped their character?

What would I possibly become without the experiences that have established my moral code?

What immeasurable loss will I be robbed of feeling when I look into the eyes of people who love me and I only see the face of strangers?

What happens if I don’t come back next time?