As soon as I open my eyes,\u00a0I\u2019m startled at my physical being.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m in a room.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m in my bed.<\/p>\n
My brain is one small part of my whole.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s been the entire whole of myself for hours,<\/p>\n
But all of a sudden, it shrinks down to its rightful size.<\/p>\n
It lives in my head.<\/p>\n
One small part of my entire body.<\/p>\n
I can\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
Until I open my eyes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Then, I am startled into being by the dim light of a new day.<\/p>\n
My body is in my room.<\/p>\n
My body is in my bed.<\/p>\n
My brain begins to recede into one small part of my whole.<\/p>\n
Throughout the morning, the afternoon, the evening, my brain tries to take over, to become all that I am.<\/p>\n
I notice my fingers typing on the keyboard.<\/p>\n
I see myself reflected back in the camera of a Zoom call.<\/p>\n
I see a deck of cards and savor how it feels as I shuffle them in my hands.<\/p>\n
I feel the disappointment of having to stay home while my family plays in the snow.<\/p>\n
I feel hungry, thirsty, restless, scattered.<\/p>\n
And then I have to remind myself that these feelings come from my body.<\/p>\n
The body I inhabit.<\/p>\n
The body that is me.<\/p>\n
Without my brain, I\u2019m not me, but the whole of me is more than my brain.<\/p>\n
This is the realization that startles me as I awaken on this anxious morning.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As soon as I open my eyes,\u00a0I\u2019m startled at my physical being. I\u2019m in a room. I\u2019m in my bed. My brain is one small part of my whole. It\u2019s been the entire whole of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[44,34,33],"class_list":["post-299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry","tag-anxiety","tag-poetry","tag-wwol"],"yoast_head":"\n