Glue

Up until about 4pm(1600) today, I'd been having the day from hell. After 4 it was more normal, and since I'm hopefully going to go see Paul Blart: Mall Cop in a little over an hour, the day will end on a high note. But what made the first part of my day so hellish? Sentences and speech.

It's often said that particles are the glue that holds sentences together. Particles are words like the, is and it, at least I'm pretty sure they are. Anyways, as of three AM this morning I found myself given an object lesson in just how much bullshit that saying really is. As it turns out, there is actually some segment of the brain that you need to pass the words through in order to glue them together and form a sentence.

I know this with absolute certainty, because when I woke up at 3 am this morning, that part of my brain was almost entirely out of commission. The greater part of my mind was still working, in fact I was examining my condition with great fascination, and thoughts and ideas continued to form. However, it felt as though there were some amount of white noise foremost in my mind. I conjured up a few words to say to test my faculty for speech, "i" "can" "speak", had the words ready, and then underwent a herculean process of breaking through that white noise enough to form a sentence with a words. I then had to battle my mouth to make it form the tongue and lips into some formation that would create a sound other than "aaaugh" before finally being able to speak my short sentence. I'm pretty sure my voice sounded like crap just then, and in review, I may have been slurring a bit, but at the time it was one hell of a relief to get out that first sentence. A relief tempered by the fact that once out, the sentence was gone and would have to be reformed from scratch.

I went through two more test sentences in those next few minutes. Truth be told, I was rather fascinated by the processes I was feeling work in my mind. The way the words would slide around the edge of the white noise, as though trying to form a new path to each other to make those important bonds that underlie a sentence. During all of this, I felt rather like shit across my whole body, any cold air that reached my legs felt like ice, the covers didn't seem to impart any warmth, and what felt like a fever even though my forehead wasn't warm to the touch.

I didn't feel scared until what felt like probably five minutes in. The point at which it occurred to me that this may not be temporary. When I began to very vividly imagine a future in which I returned my full faculties of thought, but could never speak to, or be understood by anybody again. At this point I began to attack the noise head on, pushing as much thought as possible into and through the region. Within a few seconds, the noise began to diminish, and in around or perhaps a little under a minute, the noise went away and I was able to function normally.

I don't remember much of the next few hours. I finished watching the series Samurai Champloo, and tried to focus on some bits of writing and fluff for Ronin Beat. I had agreed to give someone a ride at around 9, so I wound up awake until about 9:30 when I saw them and was apparently still looking bad enough that they offered to put it off until tomorrow without my saying a word. I slept till 3, waking up more tired than when I had gone to sleep. My day finally started at around 4, and like I said, it's been pretty all around normal since, other than being very tired... well actually that is normal.

So how was your day?