Fibro Fog

Here’s another one I keep tripping over, and this one’s worse, because I use it myself. Fibro fog. The word for when my brain goes soft and slow and the nouns wander off and I lose the end of my own sentence. Everyone uses it. I use it. And every time it leaves my mouth I wince a little, because fog is far too pretty a word for what’s actually going on.

Fog is gentle. Fog is atmospheric. Fog rolls in over the water out front and softens the whole coast into something a painter would set up an easel for. People drive here on purpose to stand in it. That’s the trouble with the word. It makes my brain sound scenic, like I’m drifting through some moody gray painting having lovely vague thoughts, when what’s really happening is that I walked into the kitchen with a clear mission and arrived with nothing, holding a spoon, unsure why.

Fog also lifts. That’s the other little fib in it. Real fog burns off by mid-morning and the day carries on. The word promises mine passes the same way, clean and predictable, just wait for the sun. But mine keeps no schedule. It comes when it comes, stays as long as it likes, and there’s no sun I can count on to clear it. Calling it fog gently implies patience will sort it out. Patience does not sort it out. I have been extremely patient. I am still holding the spoon.

And fog sounds harmless, which is the part that gets me. It sounds like a mood, a slow start, a need for more coffee. It does not sound like forgetting a friend’s name to her face. It does not sound like rereading the same line four times, or misplacing a word I’ve known my whole life, or that small cold drop in my stomach when I realize I’ve completely lost the thread of what I was saying out loud, in front of people, mid-sentence. That isn’t atmosphere. That’s my mind dropping the call, and “fog” makes it sound like weather I’m supposed to find rather peaceful.

The trouble is I don’t have a better word, so I keep reaching for this one, handing people a soft pretty picture of a thing that unsettles me. There’s no charming term for your own brain going unreliable on you. So fog it stays, the gentle painterly word for the morning I can’t find my own name, and I’ll keep using it and quietly grumbling about it, because at least when I say fog you nod, even if what you’re picturing is the view and what I’m living is the part where I can’t see the road.