My mind, my thinking, my brain — all that happens in my head — is quite good, still.

I know because half the time I beat my very bright friend “Obie” (and he was head prefect and dux of his school) in Words With Friends. Currently we are almost tied at 96/97 games. I’m not going to say who is ahead.

Besides beating Obie half the time I also know my thinking is just fine because I can remember stuff. I can plan activities. I can find my way in new-to-me cities after being lost for hours.

These are positive signs. 

I also know when to use the words “fewer” and “less” and I’m occasionally successful in letting it go when others don’t. Every time someone says “have” when “has” is correct, and this does happen even on National Public Radio, I resist yelling “HAS.” I’m proud I possess a degree of restraint as demonstrated with the lackadaisical uses of “less” and “fewer” and “have” and “has” by many (even in influential leadership positions) and so I know I have the capacity to monitor my emotions (most of the time). Obie lives halfway around the world from me so he never sees how upset I get when I have a really good word all lined up to play and then he takes the place I planned to use, and so, rather than getting a bonus of 50 points for using all my letters, Obie wins.

I keep all these pent up emotions to myself which takes some brain willpower and useful skills of avoidance.

I certainly don’t want you to have the impression that my brain zips along and tackles everything with ease and success. 

It doesn’t. 

But, I can efficiently tell you how many South African rand you can get from any amount of US Dollars and if I don’t know I know how to ask SIRI. 

I can tell you all about time zones and difficult things like the metric system.

I can even help you find Togo on a map.

What I struggle with is those new parking meters in Indianapolis where the print is so small on a screen half the size of a credit card and you have to put in your parking space number you forgot to look for when you parked. Even on good days I can’t find my car once I’ve parked it but with those new age parking meters my car is usually only a few spaces away and so after three or four trips back and forth I usually manage to enter the right number and add significantly to my 10,000 steps my phone insists I do every day. 

Tangentially, when I park at the mall or someplace like that and I can’t find my car I lock and unlock the car from a distance with that thing that replaced car keys and follow the beeps. This usually works unless I’m in the wrong level of the parking garage which has also happened. 

I’m really trying to say that my mind is in good shape, not perfect, but I trust it. 

Mostly.

Some days — even for weeks — it can lead me down dark and scary passages and very lonely rabbit holes. 

I can hear or see or read something, or I don’t hear or read or see something, and my brain makes it mean something and that something is most unpleasant, even unbearable and lonely to the max at times.

I read meaning into things and I get so convinced that I’m right and it makes me jumpy.

It’s at these times I don’t care how many times Obie wins.

Then, something happens (even if I drink strong coffee) or I read something or overhear a tidbit and put a few things together — a jigsaw-puzzle-with-thoughts kind of thing — and my head bumps into finding out I was wrong, very wrong, and I spent all that time being anxious in dark and scary places and lonely places for what.

For zilch. 

Yes. I can spell onomatopoeia (without autocorrect) and I have known how for decades. I can beat Obie (half the time) in Words With Friends. I recently even did the parking meter thing successfully in Indianapolis and paid for the right car, mine. 

Then, sometimes that same old brain takes me places, painful places, lonely places, I really don’t want to go.