I Kept Going Until I Couldn’t

That moment when your system shuts down ... and how you woke back up.

There’s a kind of exhaustion that doesn’t feel like tired.
It feels like fog. Like confusion. Like standing in your own life but nothing looks familiar.

I kept pushing.
I had just gotten out of the hospital after another round of MS symptoms ... nothing new. I was walking again. That was the win, right?

So I went back to class. Back to the lab. Back to “normal.”
I was asked to present a paper. Easy. I’d written it. I just needed to find the data.
But when I opened the folder... nothing made sense.
Not just the data ... the folder itself, the drive, the structure ... it was like someone else had written my life and left me inside it.

I didn’t notice my lab partner had left the room.
Didn’t notice the professor had been told.
When I walked into his office, still trying to “fix” it, still convinced I just needed a minute… he looked at me with something I wasn’t expecting.

Pity.

He asked me gently if something was wrong.
I told him, “I just need the data for my paper.”
And that’s when I knew something was off ... because he said, quietly:
“I think you need to go back to the hospital.”

I asked him ... tears already forming ...
“…Was this paper mine?”

He didn’t answer that.
He just said, “Go be sure you’re okay.”

That’s the moment I unraveled.

Not when I forgot my passwords.
Not when I couldn’t read kanji.
Not even when I panicked and couldn’t reach my doctor for days.

It was that moment ... where I was trying so hard to be okay… and someone looked into my effort and saw fear.

I went home, told myself I needed to relax.
But that wasn’t relaxation ... that was survival mode.

I called my best friend. We went out. I told him everything.
I wanted it to be a fluke. A bad day. A brain cramp.
But deep down, I was terrified.

Because everyone else was seeing it before I could.

They were using the passcode. I was using the key.
They were moving forward. I was locked out.
I was forgetting things that used to be second nature ... logins, names, my own patterns of thought.

And yet...
It wasn’t the forgetting that hurt the most.
It was the awareness of forgetting.
I knew something was slipping ... and I couldn’t hold on.
When I finally saw my doctor, I asked him when I’d get my memory back.
He looked at me with complete honesty and said:
“I don’t know… they’re your memories.”

And then ... like a punchline I wasn’t ready for ...
he added:
“But the brain’s a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it.”

That line rewired something in me.

So I started using it.

I played chess. Sudoku. Word puzzles. Little games that felt silly but gave me a thread to hold onto.
And then a friend ... brilliant in the way only friends can be ... said, “What if you acted?”
Memorize lines. Get on stage. Trick your brain into healing by pretending to be someone else.

It sounded ridiculous.
And maybe it was.

But something in me lit up.

Suddenly, I was alive again ... not as the person I used to be, but as someone new.
I was still forgetting passwords. Still using the key while everyone else was punching in the code.
But now... I was creating characters from scratch.
Remembering pages of dialogue.
Performing.

I wasn’t who I was before.
But I was here.

Present. Capable.
Back in the game.

Maybe not the same game.
But finally, one I wanted to play.