As soon as I open my eyes, I’m startled at my physical being.
I’m in a room.
I’m in my bed.
My brain is one small part of my whole.
It’s been the entire whole of myself for hours,
But all of a sudden, it shrinks down to its rightful size.
It lives in my head.
One small part of my entire body.
I can’t explain how strange this is to me, that my brain takes up such a small proportion of the overall area of my body. From the way it mulls things over, chews on even the smallest crumb of an idea, I expect that it’s the whole of me. When I sleep, it becomes the whole of me, spreading over my body like a fungus. Covering more and more of my physical body until it erases what’s left of me. I become my brain. My brain is me. I am my brain. My body exists only to feed my brain the ammunition it needs to keep going. My body is the battery, my brain is the me.
Until I open my eyes.
Then, I am startled into being by the dim light of a new day.
My body is in my room.
My body is in my bed.
My brain begins to recede into one small part of my whole.
Throughout the morning, the afternoon, the evening, my brain tries to take over, to become all that I am.
I notice my fingers typing on the keyboard.
I see myself reflected back in the camera of a Zoom call.
I see a deck of cards and savor how it feels as I shuffle them in my hands.
I feel the disappointment of having to stay home while my family plays in the snow.
I feel hungry, thirsty, restless, scattered.
And then I have to remind myself that these feelings come from my body.
The body I inhabit.
The body that is me.
Without my brain, I’m not me, but the whole of me is more than my brain.
This is the realization that startles me as I awaken on this anxious morning.