Brain-Mush

They took a CAT-scan of my brain, and they told me it was mush.

“Mush?!” I exclaimed.

“Mush,” they confirmed.

“Surely it can’t actually be mush,” I insisted.

“It is indeed mush.”

“But that can’t be! How does that even work? How am I even alive??”

They shrugged. “Your brain is mush,” they declared, one last time, before I was discharged from the hospital.

I had been given absolutely zero instruction as to how to de-mush my brain. And though they didn’t say anything about my mush-brain impacting my quality of life, the knowledge that my brain had liquified into what I imagine to essentially be gray-matter mashed potato was not comforting.

I had to de-mush my brain myself, I decided.

Now, one consequence of mush-brain, I quickly discovered, was that novel ideas were entirely unattainable. Try as I might, I could not force myself to produce a single original thought.

I squeezed my eyes tight and tried to concentrate. Think, think, think! I willed myself. Then, suddenly, a thought!

From the murky recesses of my mind, an image slowly surfaced. I balled my fists and held my breath as the image became clearer-- I saw a man and a woman, relaxing on a patio under a striped awning. They seemed vaguely familiar. Then they spoke,

“We love our Sun-Setter Retractable Awning!”

Huh?

I shook my head and blinked. A commercial?! All that brain power, for a commercial?

I tried again. This time, my brain only returned snippets of this month's radio hits.

Again. I pictured a billboard for hair restoration.

I sighed, defeated. I would have to try a different approach, since it appeared thinking was getting me nowhere.

I opened up my laptop and hopped online.

“How to de-mush your brain,” I typed into the search bar. I was met with several articles about unlocking 100% of my brain, one article about mushroom soup, and one very questionable link I did not bother clicking.

I decided to phone a friend. Just because I couldn’t generate ideas didn’t mean nobody else could.

They picked up on the first ring. “Hey what’s up?”

“My brain is mush,” I stated, skipping the formalities.

“Haha yeah, I get that,”

“No, literally. My brain is literally mush.”

“Uh, I mean we all have those days-”

“I just got back from the hospital. They scanned my brain and told me it was mush but they didn’t tell me how to fix it. How do I fix it?”

“Oh! Wow you mean literally literally, not figuratively literally,” they said, finally grasping what I was trying to say.

“Yes.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Apparently so.”

The line went quiet for a second as they turned over the peculiarity of my predicament. If they had more questions regarding the medical feasibility of brain-mush, they did not ask, and for that I was grateful.

We settled on a handful of strategies to attempt to de-mush my brain. The first was acupuncture.

“Well, the idea with acupuncture is that your body doesn’t see something’s wrong,” my friend explained, “and so when they stick in the pins, that kind of signals your cells to fix things there.”

I went to acupuncture. I closed my eyes so I would not look at the pins and needles. After a couple hours, I opened them. I paid the woman and left.

Though I still couldn’t think original thoughts, I had to admit my joints felt much better.

The second plan was exercise.

“Okay so if acupuncture doesn’t work, a friend of my cousin’s is a yoga instructor. The first class is free,” they told me.

I went to my friend’s cousin’s friend’s yoga class. The studio was small, but not cramped. I focused hard on my breathing as I followed the instructor’s fluid movements. My movements were not nearly as fluid, but in the moment I felt quite spiritual. I released my breaths and let my mind wander.

My wandering mind supplied a constant stream of insurance company jingles for the duration of the class.

Our third and final plan was less of a plan and more of a joke, but by this point I was desperate. I placed one ice pack on each of my temples, and I wrapped an athletic bandage around my head to hold them in place. Opening the freezer, I pulled out a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. I grabbed a spoon and made my way over to the bathroom.

There was a kitchen chair that I had placed in front of the sink. Before I sat down, I turned on just the cold water. I sat, shoveled several scoops of ice cream into my mouth, and threw my head back so that my hair caught the running water. I let the ice cream fully melt on the roof of my mouth before adding another bitterly cold scoop.

Several minutes passed.

I developed an excruciating headache after the third bite of ice cream, and abandoned re-solidifying my mush brain altogether.

For the next few days following my failed series of schemes, I mostly lazed about in bed, wallowing in the devastating knowledge that my brain was now, and would always be, mush. I scrolled on my phone aimlessly, the blue light of the screen the only tint to my pallor skin. When laying on my back bored me, I would roll over to first my left side, then my right. I only got up to eat and use the restroom.

On the sixth night of the sixth day of my misery, I raised my head to roll over from my left side to my right, when I noticed a peculiar dampness on my pillow. I shone my phone light over the spot, and felt bile rise up my throat.

There, staining my pillowcase, was a puddle of what seemed to be gray applesauce, if applesauce smelled like rancid meat. I felt something warm ooze down the left side of my neck, and my hand shot up to meet it. I drew it away, and to my horror found the same slimy substance stuck to my fingertips.

I booked it to the bathroom and fumbled for the light. As it clicked on, I saw my reflection staring at me in shock, gray ooze dripping from its ear-- my ear. I gripped the edge of the counter with white knuckles to keep myself from tumbling onto the floor. Taking a few deep breaths to compose myself, I reached for a towel. I ran it under warm water, and dabbed away the slime with a shudder.

Exhaustion hit me like a truck then, and I promptly curled up on the bathroom floor and fell asleep.

When I awoke the next day, I was too horrified and disgusted by the last night’s events to even return to my room, much less to grab my phone. I walked outside, trying desperately to clear my mind of the sickening memory. I walked all around town. I walked to and from the library three times. The librarian was taking a lunch break outside when I passed it on the second lap, and kindly informed me of the weekly community events.

By my third lap, it had gotten dark, and my stomach was growling instantly at me. I walked into the library and spotted a sign promising free snacks and drinks during that night’s workshop. My stomach urged me into the room behind the sign, a small common area with tables and chairs and several other library-goers. The snack table was all the way on the other side.

Before I could cross the room however, the librarian from earlier stood up at the front and asked us all to take our seats. Gazing forlornly at the plates of cookies, I reluctantly lowered myself into a chair, stomach groaning in protest.

As it turned out, the class was a creative writing workshop, and the topic of the evening was “Stream of Consciousness.” The librarian supplied us all with a pen and notebook, which were donated by the village, and asked us to bring our notebooks with us every week.

I stared blankly at my equally blank notebook, twirling my pen nervously. It had been almost a full week since my brain was pronounced mush; the last thing I needed was to be reminded of that fact. Besides, I still wasn’t sure if it was appropriate for me to grab any snacks yet. The librarian must have seen my fidgeting, because she appeared next to my table before long.

“Are you stuck, dear?” The librarian was a sweet old woman; she called everyone dear.

I nodded sheepishly. I didn’t want to have to explain to her why I was stuck.

“That’s okay now! I just wanted to remind you, that for this activity you just have to write anything that’s on your mind.”

“Anything?” I echoed.

“Anything,” she said with a nod and a smile. “It’s a great exercise to flex that brain muscle!” she laughed.

I wrote one line:

Man, am I hungry.

That was an original thought, right? Granted, it wasn’t much, but at least it wasn’t a hardware store slogan or something.

I put the nib of my pen to the paper again, but this time I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply. When I opened them again, I started scratching words into the paper, cautiously at first, and then scribbling with enthusiasm by the end of my sentence:

They took a CAT-scan of my brain, and they told me it was mush.

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