A note on vertigo

In case you are unfamiliar, vertigo is a sensation much like dizziness, except prolonged and, for me, often accompanied with the perception of time slowing down.

I don’t mean like when you stare at the clock, willing it to go faster, although I experience that frequently, too.

I mean my thoughts literally come to me in slow motion. I can hear my inner monologue slow…until…I think…a…single…word…at…..a……..time. Melodies that might be stuck in my head stretch endlessly, cords strung out with excessive fermatas, drum beats that you would forget are there until they spring out from the silence much too long after they are due.

And that is to say nothing of the distinct feeling of rocking back and forth. I feel like I’m on a boat, listing restlessly on obvious, though not violent, waves.

Forward, back, forward, back, then occasionally side to side.

It is constant. It can be disorienting.

I’ve had it for the past few days, and while I’ve tried to sit in front of a computer and narrow my eyes, concentrate and ignore the way my hands feel like they should be swaying along with this gentle, lapping rhythm (typing is truly a chore. I miss letters, backspace too many times), it never ends well.

I am lulled by the rocking, by the impossibly slow tempo of my thoughts.

Not to say that I think less. It’s simply that I am slowed to a point that I must think more deeply. Instead of the complex highway of thoughts and sub-thoughts, notions, dreams, memories, ideas, and other ephemeral things, it is a river. It is constant, and it is dragging me forward at its own pace, even as I fail to feel the wet, almost slimy bottom of the riverbed with my toes.

I struggle to remember conversations and details that normally stand out to me. I’m one of those people that will recall a birthday of someone to whom I’ve not spoken in years. And that’s best case. Worst case, I remember some minute detail that was shared that makes me sound like a too-interested friend. I have some honestly creepy examples of things that have simply stayed in my brain for longer than is strictly necessary. I’ve stopped bringing them up because I find it makes people uncomfortable.

But right now, I struggle to find words for commonplace ideas. I lose track of what imagery I’ve used. I simply exist – back and forth, back and forth.

All of this to say that I will not have a clever post about Salesforce, or Marketing Automation, or the woeful attempts of DC and Warner Brothers to catch up to Disney’s powerhouse of super hero movies this week.

Only this winding, steady current of vertigo.