I woke up on a Monday feeling different than I had in ages. I couldn’t put my finger on it. But something had changed. I could think. I could focus. I felt great excitement for the day. For life.
It was wondrous at first. Then it turned to fear. Would this last? Would the clock strike twelve and my carriage turn into a pumpkin?
The feeling was hard to describe. Yet it lasted. It felt like my brain had healed. Is this what I have been missing?
For the longest time, I had lived in a fog. My brain failing me. I had lost the ability to remember simple words. Or the names of people I saw every day. Unable to focus on anything for long. I struggled to find motivation, excitement, or hope.
I remember sitting in front of the TV that Thursday, not really paying attention. Things I thought the fog had taken permanently were coming back. I wanted to turn to my wife and say, “I don’t know what happened, but I think my brain is healed.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to jinx it.
In so many ways, I had been healed. Yet I feared the moment it would end. Surely it would. It was only a matter of when.
For those five days, I was crisper. I was charismatic. I was stronger. I felt like I could handle anything. It was a glimpse of hope. Each day it grew stronger.
And it lasted.
Until it didn’t.
Then on Friday evening, I went out for a couple of drinks and awoke hungover and exhausted. It was gone. I knew immediately: the glimpse was over. I had returned to my old state.
I slept for nearly the entire day. It was a result of drinking for the first time in months, but it felt like more than that. Had my brain been working on a “Limitless” drug that week and this was the crash? I felt even more tired the next day.
Weeks later, I still sit with the crash. It’s no longer a crash as much as a return to normal. The normal I had known for so long. It felt like The Family Man. A glimpse of what could have been.
This was my glimpse.
Now it was gone.
I have spent the last few weeks trying everything in my power to replicate that week.
“Hmm, I started taking creatine. Could that have been it? Maybe I need to increase the dose?”
“What about the magnesium I took before bed? That doesn’t seem to be working anymore?”
Trying to triangulate the root cause. What went right? What hadn’t gone wrong?
I wonder if I would have been better off never having the glimpse at all. Certainly, if it’s forever fleeting.
For years I had assumed the fog was simply who I had become. That week suggested something else entirely.
Still, I hold hope that this is my true mind. My true future. It was not a fluke. It was a glimpse meant to change my course and bring light through the fog.
the counterfactual 