Trauma

I once read that the brain, having been built to detect constant dangers lurking in the dark, is a prediction machine. You feed it information, and it spits out an emotion to feel and a behavior to follow. I used to treasure my brain until an accident left the software on an infinite loop. No amount of interruptions could cancel the error box. A visceral memory floats up, and it is lost with no where to go. It is telling me I’m overloading, but I just feel it as grief.

The brain likes to seek out information that it can never grasp to try to predict the impossible. It is a reaction to uncontrollable pain. The brain and body wishes to never be in the same situation again. So it tries to predict. And predict.

And predict to no avail.

This loop is what keeps me imprisoned, but there is respite. Through the act of creation, I come to slowly move aside the past. For every word I write, my brain grasps a little less, accepting more that ambiguity, loss, and the uncontrollable are woven into life. Like all stories that I write, there is no goal, but each word flows closer towards a end that tells me that everything will work out.

The best way for me to predict the future is to give up the cage of control and to write the words that will free me.