This past year changed my brain
in more ways than I can name.
Not just my memory,
but how I think,
how I feel,
how I am.

Illness did that.
Hospitals, medications,
the cycles of pain and healing,
they rewired me.
Each flare, each sleepless night,
each time I was woken to be tested, poked,
explained to,
they left quiet imprints
on the way my mind now moves.

My thoughts are slower now,
as if wading through water.
Short-term things slip away.
The word I just said,
why I walked into a room,
what I meant to do next.

But the long-term stays,
rooted deep like old trees
that even the storm couldn’t tear down.

Still, I don’t always feel like me.
It’s strange,
living inside a mind
that no longer feels familiar.

Sometimes I catch a flicker.
A familiar rhythm.
A trace of the old sharpness.
And for a moment I exhale,
recognizing myself again.

Then the fog returns,
soft and heavy,
and I lose the thread.

Once, I could trust my mind.
It was quick, certain,
a place I could rely on.
Now I retrace my steps
to remember what I was saying,
write down reminders
to hold what used to come so easily.

There’s grief in that.
Frustration too.
When focus slips,
when I reach for words
and they scatter like startled birds.

Some days I feel like I’m watching
the person I was
from far away.

But slowly,
I’m learning to stop fighting it.
To see that even in the fog,
my mind is still working.
Different, yes,
but determined.
Rebuilding new paths
where old ones failed.

Maybe this slowing
is its own kind of wisdom.
Maybe this forgetting
is how healing begins.
By making space
for what matters to stay.

My mind is different now,
but it’s still mine.
Still trying.
Still learning new ways
to bring me home
to myself.

And maybe,
just maybe,
this version of me
will grow into something stronger.
More patient, more kind,
more rooted in what endures.

Because even when everything else fades,
there is still something in me
that remembers
how to begin again.