COVID Brain is a thing

It’s curious to witness how our brains overcompensate for what we cannot possibly fathom, let alone, process, during these COVID times. Need I mention the danger of an inexplicable need for sudden-onset naps—like while driving. Or forgetting where you are while driving—is like a sneak preview onto the window of dementia. Three pairs of glasses on my head has become the new norm. And yes, I’ve added a second pair of glasses atop the ones I’m using. Just call me six-eyes.

Misplaced things resurfacing in the oddest of places—car keys in the fridge, cellphone in the cabinet. I don’t even want to discuss the places I’ve stashed outgoing mail. Or another favorite, completely forgetting to do simple hard-wired tasks—like pushing the start button on the washer, and then coming back an hour later, completely baffled. Half-completed tasks while multi-tasking stack up like a madhouse litany. I’m grounding my auto-pilot’s plane and canceling his license.

Have you noticed how certain simple coping skills are dropped, or rearranged according to vicarious whims, while other tasks take on an unusual precedence to the point of stark-raving OCD mania? Keeping your eye on the prize often discombobulates into an at-home version of a low-rent Monty Python skit. That THC-free spaciness is a real thing.

My cousin and I seem to be at a loss for certain common, and rather ordinary nouns verging on plainness, on any given day which makes for hilarious, if demented, conversations—each of us supplying the MIA noun for the other in tandem, without either of us missing a beat.

When a friend marveled over how the French don’t pronounce the final continent of a word, I laughed so hard, I very nearly became incontinent, my eyes peed their pants. Becca’s friend substituted the word celibate for being content—which added a surreal twist to the conversation.

Meanwhile, our higher power is distracted while trying to fathom the concept of, or plumb the depths of mass extinction, we’ve come up with some rather amazing work-arounds and patches when the working nouns in any given sentence refuse to tow the line, or worse, flee the scene of any given conversation. I’ve been known to yell at my cousin, Hey, I need a working noun (rarely a verb) here! Our sentences are beginning to resemble autocorrect at its finest. Lately I’ve taken to handcuffing working nouns to the proverbial greased pole.

Things versus actions are becoming an endangered species. And no, we are not experiencing gaslighting, mad cow disease or Alzheimer’s, atrophy, or dementia wholesale. Grief, anxiety, depression, stress all distract our brains as we try to make sense of these trying times we live in.

The ordinary and the mundane fall by the wayside as our processors whirr night and day. Day and night. Every waking dream is post COVID-19. We are all suffering from COVID fatigue syndrome. Call it PTSD if you must name it. COVID brain is a thing. The fogbank of the fugue months is very real and taking names. As my friend said, Every day is Blurrsday. We have lost our point of reference. And every month is Blurruary.

Feel free to leave your current whack-jobs, workarounds, and cures, or at least how you keep the beast at bay, below.