Incapable of thinking

1. The first thing to go is the ability to think creatively or logically. If I am engaged in a task and there is a possible way of completing in a faster, more simple or better way, I will manage to ignore the flashing warning signals and keep trudging along the beaten track. Spontaneous questions that involve memory recall are destined to fail. Vocabulary shrivels down to the basics, the ability to pronounce things clearly or articulate properly disappears. Conversation other than the necessities becomes too difficult. Along with the ability to think outside the square, being exposed to stimulating material is overwhelming and daunting.

2. Next to vanish is the attention span. Even if I believe I am concentrating, staring at words on a page, my mind has exited the room and is dancing in the puddles outside, thinking about something irrelevant, busy twisting itself into overanalysis or concocting ideas for dinner. I should take this as a cue for what I so desperately need but I never do. I fidget in my seat, flicker back and forth between what I should be doing and what I shouldn't be doing. I read pages and can't remember the subject matter, much less any type of evaluation of material. Basic things become very difficult. I revert back to a page several times just to copy out a sentence accurately. I find myself using wrong tenses, bad grammar, stubby fingers struggling with hitting the right key on the keyboard (and before I wrote 'right' I wrote 'write'). Life is becoming too hard but because I can't think beyond what I am doing at that exact moment, it is destined to remain unchanged for the moment. It's getting worse.

3. The slippery slope of deterioration is steepest when this phase dawns upon me. As I struggle with my brain thumping against the inside of my skull, my hands shaking as I pick up a pen, having to think long and hard about how to construct the sentence 'I am in the room in the library with the green reading lights', I am angry. My whole body is tensed with rage. My eyes are black darts, shooting looks of disdain and contempt at anyone who makes a noise. Why am I so angry? Because the girl sitting opposite me is wearing bangles which are hitting the desk as she types. And I will probably kill her, because I am an irrational fiery ball of crankiness, who hates everything in her direct vicinity. Including the way the lecturer is pronouncing 'transport' and the crackle that it is producing in the left ear of my headphones. I am bubbling and spitting, a cauldron of discontent, of unpleasantness, of stewing distress and fury.

4. Stop. What is that? Through the blindfold that has been plastered over my eyes, enabling me to only see red spots of anger, I recognise something. An innate reaction. And whilst I am angry about it, there is rationale starting to peak through, struggling against the dark shutters but nonetheless letting in a persistant stream of light that is enabling me to focus clearly for half a second. The person sitting beside me is eating. The smells emitted from the spicy hot bowl of nourishing goodness they have in front of them stir something within me which I had obviously tried to repress for too long. My stomach growls. Not just growls, but rumbles and roars like a caged animal who has been injected with a shot of adrenalin. It dawns on me very suddenly, very clearly. I am hungry. Not just hungry, but starved, possibly going to go blind with famine and desperately need something to eat, right now, this very second.

I breathe in food, inhale it in one gulp. And then happiness and tranquillity reign supreme (unless someone tries to pry it from my grasp) and I can live again. The demons have settled, until dinner time. Or until we pool our change and charge towards the vending machine, needs satisfied by king-sized chocolate. But, it's like you told me, the advice I will treasure and ignore its untruth. Nothing is bad for you when you are doing something good.