Inside The Brain

A land that looks like sticky spaghetti clumped into a mass of machinery constantly processes and outputs information, and hasn’t slept in 26 years. It has been called many names: the brain, the grey matter, the hat rack, but it is still being debated if somebody named the brain, or it named itself. Some say I rule the brain, and some say the brain rules me. Whatever it is, this is the story of my adventure inside the brain.

I enter the land of neurons, and start my tour from the occipital lobe where I see circuits and sparks, and lights of different colors, “How did I end up here?” That’s a question I don’t know the answer to, but I proceed towards the temporal lobe where the memories are stored. I see a random bulky, neuronal chair in the middle of all these complexities, and for some reason, it’s called the hippocampus. I walk towards it, somehow knowing that is where I’m supposed to sit, also because I see nothing else I can sit on. I plopped myself down on the awfully-soft, and weird-textured chair, I put my hands on the armrest, straighten my back, and scream, “I’m ready! Let’s watch some memories.”

The entire area suddenly lights up, and thumbnails of memory clips start popping out of the walls surrounding me. They are memories from when I was three and a half years old to the present moment, neatly categorized by mood, age, and so on. When I focus on one memory clip, the description, date and time flow on the screen. “Learning to write my name” I read from the description, and suddenly everything starts playing in 3D. I see a little boy wearing a striped blue and white polo with khaki shorts, and his head facing downwards completely focused on the chalkboard. He slowly writes the letter “T”, evaluates it for 20 seconds and moves on to the next letter. Finally, he finishes the last letter as he connects the lines to make a circle. The word spelled -- Tycho. That’s me, and I always hated this name. I never found any souvenir cups or keychains with my name on it. Apparently, this name was my uncle’s idea, and my parents loved it. Uncle Alan loved naming people and animals. He named his dog Pat, so he could say, “Pat the dog”. He found it hilarious. I have very few memories of him because he passed away when I was about ten years old, but I do remember him taking me out for ice cream every time he visited. He was also my summer camp counselor for two years in a row until I stopped going to summer camps.

“Okay, let’s watch something to get me nostalgic,” I say while focusing on a thumbnail of me getting off a school bus, dated 30 September 2003, 2:35 pm. The video gets interrupted by a pop-up, “Would you like to turn your external senses on?” I say, “Hell yes!” Now, as I step off the bus, I feel the cool air after it rains. “I feel it!” I scream with joy. I step my tiny feet on the wet road, resisting to jump in little puddles filled with water. I love rain -- I love the gloomy sky. It makes me feel the opposite inside. I love the fresh earthy smell, and on days like this, I love snuggling inside a blanket and sleep. The first ASMR that calmed my anxiety was when the rain pitter-pattered on the rooftop, as my mum sang “You are my sunshine” to me, and gently brushed my hair until I fell asleep.

“Ah, I miss mum.” I continue watching the clip, waiting for me to reach home. When my tiny white house is visible, I run towards it as fast as I can. “My swing set!” I jump with joy. I open the tiny black gate at the entrance, and as I run up the bluestone steps leading to the front door, I hear my mum’s favorite TV soap opera cranking up, and the smell of freshly steamed chicken dumplings hit my nose. “Ah, I loved this feeling.” Dumplings are my comfort food and always remind me of home. I remember eating them so much, I felt guilty afterwards and had to purge. Now that I think about it I might have had an eating disorder because I did this a lot after binge eating. This part of my childhood is blurry to me, and for some reason, I want to let it be.

I remember Charles from that phase of my life. I met him in Miss M’s Math class in first grade, and somehow we became best friends by bonding over soccer and watching Jimmy Neutron and Power Rangers after school at my house. We were best friends for about two years until he suddenly stopped talking to me one day. He made a joke about something I don’t remember now. My frontal lobe processed the information, and decided it wasn’t funny. Hence, I didn’t laugh, and Charles didn’t talk to me ever again.

This reminds me of my current best friend, Dan, and I see a clip of a music festival that we went to. “This was an amazing time!” I say jumping in my chair. I had just broken up with Karen, my third girlfriend of the year. I always manage to screw something up, and although I have been meaning to see a therapist, I’ve been avoiding it for the past ten years. To cheer me up from the relationship issues, Dan promised to take me backstage at a music festival, but he never mentioned how. So, we both had to wear a random black t-shirt that said “Security” on it and carried a bag of ice to the festival. When somebody tried to question us, we pretended that we were doing something urgent, and entered backstage with full confidence. We hung out in there for 15 minutes thinking how cool we were until we got kicked out by two big guys who were the actual security. I now see us on the floor laughing the hardest we’ve ever laughed. Fat tears slowly roll down our cheeks. I am the one who snorts while laughing, and whenever Dan’s laughter intensifies, he would go into a silent laughter mode while slapping the ground. I can feel the endorphins rush into my brain, and I feel the high kick in. “Gosh, I can’t remember the last time I laughed so much.” Nothing pops up, so I guess this was the last time I laughed so hard. “That’s kinda sad.”

The one part I missed out is that I did get very anxious while sneaking in. My palms and forehead started getting real sweaty -- glad I had that bag of ice. It’s weird that the negative emotions recalled from bad events fade quicker than the positive emotions from the good events. Like, when after years we try to remember our trip to Disney Land, we remember it being much more fun than it was at that time. The brain is so powerful it blocks out memories that may be traumatic, in order to protect itself, and to let us carry on with our everyday life.

“That is so deep, and I am so endorphin high.”

“Oh, I can shuffle play?” I just hope I don’t have to go back to my third-grade science class when I peed my pants because I was too afraid to ask Ms. Davis to go to the bathroom. “Why was I so shy?” Although, I still do have self-esteem issues. Breaking this thought, a thumbnail pops up. I try to focus my eyes on it but it does not start playing. There is a lock icon on the top right -- “That’s weird.” I focus on the lock, and all the lights become red as a trigger warning pops up: “This clip contains triggering and/or sensitive material. Are you sure you want to continue?”

I can no longer feel the endorphins. I know I shouldn’t watch this but I continue anyway. It’s summer camp Y2K, and I see a middle-aged man in a semi-dark area, the clip is blurry but suddenly I remember everything. The clip stops itself. I come to the terrifying realization that Charles didn't stop talking to me because I didn't laugh at his joke. “No no no,” it wasn't that trivial, he stopped because I had been denying the fact that I was sexually assaulted by the same person who'd assaulted him, my uncle Alan.