Sometimes we talk. Sometimes we don’t. This morning, we don’t.
Maurice is chewing peanut butter on toast with the focus of a monk. I’m staring into my mug like it’s personally betrayed me.
Then, quietly, like something sacred breaking the silence, I speak.
“I always wanted to live a life less ordinary, you know.”
Maurice glances at me but doesn’t say a word. He knows better.
“This is not me. I worked for No.10. I stood in courtrooms with silk robes and steel in my voice. I interviewed ministers, rewrote policy, walked into boardrooms and turned grown men into stuttering schoolboys.”
I look at my reflection in the coffee cup.
“Now? Now I get locked in hospital toilets because I can’t figure out how the handle works. That’s what PCA – that bastard Benson – does. It strips the clever from you and leaves the confused behind.”
Maurice reaches over and squeezes my hand.
“Kaza, I hate to tell you this – but you were never ordinary. Always different.”
I snort. “Yeah? Tell that to the baristas across the road. I saw them placing bets yesterday on whether I’d remember my name at the counter.”
He grins. “Did you?”
“Almost. I called myself Luna.” 
He laughs. “That’s the dog’s name.”
“Close enough,” I sigh. “You know what the worst part is? The looks. The faces people make when I say I’ve got a degenerative brain disease. Their smiles freeze like I’ve just told them I moonlight as an axe murderer.”
Maurice nods. “It’s fear. People are idiots when they’re scared.”
“Well, they should be. I am contagious. My condition spreads awkwardness at an alarming rate.”
We laugh – really laugh – and for a moment, I forget.
Then the moment shifts. My eyes squint at the edge of the room.
“Maurice… is the table moving?”
“No, love. You are imagining it again.”
“Brilliant,” I mutter. “Next, I’ll be wrestling the sofa thinking it’s a burglar.”
“Only if you wear your jumper backwards again.”
“That was a fashion statement.”
I lean back in my chair, mug in hand like it’s tethering me to the real world. Outside, Luna barks at a seagull. Inside, the clock ticks louder than it should. The fog is coming again, curling around the corners of my thoughts.
“I want to write this down,” I whisper.
Maurice looks up. “What?”
“My story. All of it. Before it melts into the background. Before I forget I had one.”
He nods slowly. “Okay. Let’s do it. One word at a time.”
I smile.
“Let’s call it – I want to die on a black run, not on a toilet.”
Maurice smiles. Is he sad? “I think that’s so you,” he says with a smile.
He adds, “You have probably heard the quote:
“Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming, ‘Wow! What a Ride!’.”
Yes. That’s how I lived. That’s how I still want to live. I’ve always had a voice – and I don’t intend to lose it now. And it’s so ‘Mindset Maurice’ full of positive thoughts and his bloody quotes. Yet what I’m facing is scary. It’s cruel. It’s unpredictable.
But I want the world to know; I will ski. I will ride. I will speak up. And I will keep my voice. I will wrestle life until I win or until the end. Not in the same way I used to – but in the fact that I’m still here. Still fighting to stay here. Still laughing. Still cursing. Still turning up in mismatched shoes and calling it fashion. This is what PCA looks like. This is what blooming mental feels like. It’s confusing. It’s exhausting. But it’s not the end of me.
It’s the beginning of a new story. And if you’ll stick with me, I’ll tell it – one botched coffee order, one public toilet disaster, one friend, one foe, and one brutally honest page at a time.
If you hadn’t already guessed. Hello. I’m Karen. I once had a life less ordinary and let me tell you – my life now feels like one long, unscheduled therapy session. No sofa. No scented candles. Just the raw, unfiltered version of me. I terrified CEOs and charmed waiters. I debated ministers before breakfast and recruited a managing director by lunch.
I didn’t do ordinary. I wasn’t ordinary. I was confident. I threw myself down mountains, climbed peaks, and walked into rooms I wasn’t invited to – and left with the room. I had opinions sharp as broken glass, and I never apologised for them. There was no fear. I didn’t set out to frighten people, but I was never afraid of them either.
There was no soft fade to who I was. I arrived. Loud. Mental hair. Converse on. Certain. Unapologetic. If there was a table of power, I didn’t ask for a seat. I brought my own damn table.
But now?
Now I get locked in public toilets because my brain forgets how door handles work. Now I order coffee and forget if I’ve paid. Or what my name is. (Last week, I confused the Co-op by getting lost in the aisles. Aisles I had travelled thousands of times over the last 20 years.)
Now people talk at me like I’ve already left the room. Except – I’m still here. Just foggy. Still me. Just harder to find.
My diagnosis from the doctors in 2024: I called Tornado Brain.
I’ve got a condition called PCA – Posterior Cortical Atrophy. Or, if you want to be posh about it, Benson’s Syndrome.
It’s rare. It’s degenerative. And it’s currently wrecking my brain with the flair of a rock star trashing a hotel room.
Benson is a cunt. He is malevolent. He rewires me, flips my switches, unplugs my certainty. He makes the world a vacillating, shimmering wave where everything is shifting and moving and 3D has vanished.
Some days, it feels like my mind’s been hijacked by a tornado – one clear thought whirling in the middle, surrounded by a spin cycle of chaos, static, and confusion. Trying to think straight is like catching smoke in a snowstorm.
And my eyes? They’ve decided to go on permanent vacation. The doctors politely call it "visual impairment". I call it bloody useless.
Navigating the world now feels like wandering through a foggy swamp with no compass, no map, and no clue. Try putting on eyeliner when your eyes can’t even agree on where your face is.
Actually – don’t. When I start sharing that I’ve got a degenerative brain disease, I might as well shout, “CLEAR THE ROOM!”
The reaction is always the same. Eyes widen. Smiles lock in place. And I can practically hear the internal alarm: “Danger, Will Robinson! This one’s unstable!”
It’s like I’ve become a walking public health warning: "APPROACH WITH CAUTION. May meltdown without notice."
Some friends flinch. Others ghost. So many have silently disappeared. They text the odd message to salvage their conscience. A few attempt a brave face – like they’re trying not to spook a nervous horse. I half expect someone to throw me a sugar cube.
Honestly, who needs enemies when you’ve got friends like these? They nod a lot. Say things like “You’re so brave”. Then quietly start backing away like they’ve just remembered an urgent dental appointment… in Bolivia.
It’s a wonder they don’t break into a rendition of the Hokey Cokey just to diffuse the tension. And maybe they should. Because if we can’t laugh about this – about the sheer, surreal absurdity of it all – then what’s the bloody point?
Still, I’ve learned something else in the quiet spaces they leave behind. The real ones – the magic circle – they step forward when the rest step out. They don’t fill the silence with pity or platitudes. They just sit with me. Sometimes in laughter. Sometimes in nothing at all.
And maybe it’s in that silence that the story really begins. Because long before Benson showed up and rewired my brain like a badly programmed robot, I was already wired differently.
I’ve always craved a life less ordinary.
As I may have mentioned – though forgive me if I forget – I do that often – I’m a Geordie lass from the banks of the Tyne... I repeat, and repeat, and repeat… I don’t even know I’m doing it. That’s Benson again taking over my mind, wiping my short-term memory, like he’s scrubbing me out bit by bit.
Let’s rewind to the beginning – my conception: a legendary halftime moment during the 1966 World Cup final. England won, and my dad scored. Talk about timing.