How My Mind Works

I have a friend (who shall remain nameless) who calls me almost every day on his way home from having morning "coffee".  I have known this man for probably 13 years, so I am beginning to understand how his mind works....but it isn't easy!  He doesn't call to talk WITH me....he talked TO me. As he drives on his way home, he will comment on things that he sees on the road...things I can't see and don't care about....interspersed with commentary about people and things of importance to him, and I never know when he has changed focus.  One minute, we are talking about someone in his family, and the next, it is someone else that we haven't even talked about.  Lately, I've called him out on warning me when he changes topics.  He now says "I don't have a good segue, so I'm talking about someone/something else."  It helps!  But that's how his mind works.  He is a stream-of-consciousness talker--not a listener.  Once I figured that out, I got better at listening to him and understanding that all he needs from me as a friend is validation.  I can't always give it to him, but I do care.

Six years ago, I suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm while visiting my sister in Illinois. I've already gone into the details of that several times on this blog...but I have come to realize that #1. I was not grateful enough for what was done for me, and #2. I learned a bit about how my brain works. I was not grateful enough because, at no time, did I believe I was in danger.  And that explains some of how my mind processes things.  I knew that my head hurt, and I knew that I was violently vomiting, sick as a dog...but at no time did I go unconscious or lose the ability to speak or walk or think.  To my addled brain, it was just an illness to get over.  Which, thanks be to God, I did.  My neurosurgeon's nurse in Peoria told me I would probably not remember any of what was done prior to or during surgery.  She was wrong.  Some of it is foggy, but I remember most of it.  My neurosurgeon in Indianapolis, once I got home, kept asking me if my mind seemed cloudy, like I couldn't think straight.  No...that never happened (and I kind of resented him for asking that!).

In my life's experiences, I have noticed that my brain shuts down in crisis situations.  It goes into overdrive, which is not to mean that it works harder....only that it goes to another place above all of the chaos.  I guess it would be more accurate to say it goes numb.  Thankfully, I haven't had too many of these situations to deal with.  The aneurysm was one of those.  I was like a passenger on a ship that was going to sail whether I wanted it to or not.  My mother's unexpected death was another one of those numbing occasions.  There were two others that I choose not to write about for fear of injuring people that I love, but I have to tell you that I learned a lot about myself in those happenings.

When not in crisis, I know that my mind processes with associations.  I taught English literature for a lot of years.  When a theme came up, I could often think of the same theme in other genres...themes that I hoped my students would understand.  I couldn't help but share them with my classes.  One day, I sang some lines to a song that verified the theme in a particular literary selection, and one of my students spoke up, "You make me sick!"  Thinking I was about to get a student-cricitism of my teaching technique, he said, "One minute, you are reading poetry, and the next minute, you burst into song!"  I think it was meant as a compliment.  I never apologized for it.  But from that, I came to understand that I cannot think of one theme without comparing it to another.  It's just how I am!!