16
I am walking, but I don’t know how. If I stop to think about it, I become baffled as to how it is possible, how my body knows what to do.
As long as I am in motion, I am distracted, the pain muted temporarily by the movement of my body through space. My head throbs, but not as much as it does when I’m standing still, and the forward momentum of my physical self as I walk lulls my brain into a kind of dull satisfaction. I am moving, I am walking somewhere, this is what people do, I am doing it.
At a crosswalk, I wait at the corner, understanding by sheer reflex to obey the red light, and as soon as I stand still the pain rushes back, flooding my head, a wave crashing on rocks. The base of my skull pounds and throbs, an echo of the rhythm of my walking, until the tide settles again from my standing still and the pain morphs back into its usual constant assault, bright and steady. I grip the right side of my head, pressing against the base of my skull as if to hold it in place. This is another distraction from the pain. But it’s nothing that lasts, nothing that makes it go away.
The light is green but I’m still standing there. People brush past me and then I realize, Oh, I should walk now, and then I do. I am going to the store. Why am I going to the store? I need to go to the store. I keep walking, somehow knowing how to go to the store, and then I remember, I need to get pasta and Benadryl and Advil and Band-Aids, that’s why I’m going to the store. The pain in my head, so steady and unceasing once I am finally standing still, now pulses with my footsteps. I’m tempted to keep walking forever, because of how painful my head feels when I stop, and yet I’m aware that the longer I am upright, the worse I feel, the less clearly I can think, the more punishing the pain becomes, the stranger the strange things are that begin to happen.
I find myself approaching the entrance to the store, and I have a fleeting sensation of both recognition and surprise. How did I get here? And yet I am here. You did it! My brain congratulates me, and I feel inordinately accomplished. I made it to the store, the whole way, all four blocks. My head throbs. It feels as though my whole body now pulses with the pain of it as I stand there, trying to orient myself outside the store. For a moment I feel a rush of confusion—Why am I outside this store?—but my body moves me forward and I walk through the automatic doors, the rush of air conditioning goose bumping my skin.
Once inside, once I’m no longer propelling myself down the street at a normal walking pace like a normal person, I’m caught by the resurgence of my pain. The base of my skull is a sharp demanding sensation that overtakes my ability to make sense of everything, of anything. There is a cacophony of information: the music in the air around me, the words in that music; the assault of illumination, the overhead lights like spotlights aimed at my cortex; the towering aisles of color, products aligned and stacked and displayed, everything competing for my attention. Three steps inside the store and I am overwhelmed. Why am I here? How did I get here? What did I come here for again? The pain crowds out everything, and so I begin to walk the aisles, hoping that movement will dull things again, that walking past all the organized items on the shelves will trigger a memory of what I’m there for, or remind me of what it is that I had intended to do.
Instead I find myself beginning to panic, the pain overtaking me. I can’t think, and if I close my eyes, I can’t feel where my left arm is in space. It’s like if I close my eyes, a part of me doesn’t exist anymore. If I close my eyes, all there’s room for is pain. And yet my head hurts so much that closing my eyes is all I can think to do, and when I open my eyes to locate my disappearing left arm again, I realize I am crying—not because I’m upset, but because this is what happens when I’m upright for more than fifteen minutes. I have reached my limit. But I don’t know what to do. I keep wandering the aisles, an empty basket in my hand—When did you get a basket?—tears streaming down my face, my skull aching as though my brain is trying to tunnel its way out. Eventually, the only thing that makes sense to me is to give up. I stare down at the empty basket, a part of me reminding myself that I must return it to its rightful place before I can leave. Just find the place where the baskets live and return this one to its family, my brain tells me, and this makes complete sense to me in the moment. And then I am walking out the door, back into the thick Philadelphia heat, my body propelling me home. You can just come back later, when you remember what you were supposed to get, my brain assures me. That’s a fantastic idea, it congratulates me. And as I feel myself thinking that thought, it really does seem like a fantastic idea. It seems like something that makes sense. I should probably believe it.
I have done this before. I’ll find myself in
