Bex O’Brian

Word Count 1135

This story begins with my ear but ends in my brain. One night, while watching TV with my husband, I leaned far back to kiss the dogs that were asleep on the pillow behind me. When I sat up, the world was a Cubist nightmare. I screamed and clung to my husband to prevent myself from slipping further down into these crazy shards of reality. My husband, ever helpful, immediately cried, "OH MY GOD, YOU HAVE A BRAIN TUMOUR.” I didn’t. I was having my first vertigo attack. Not being that well off at the time, I didn’t have health insurance, so I learned to live with my vertigo. I never turned my head to the right and always slept on my left-hand side, so now I have deep furrows on my forehead and on one side of my lips. I look like a half-faced smoker. 

This situation might’ve gone on forever, but one summer, we went up to Canada, and it occurred to me that I should take advantage of the Canadian health services. We went to a doctor in a small town. I told him my symptoms, and he had me lie back to perform what I later learned was the Epley maneuver. I don’t know if I had the worst vertigo ever, but it did nothing for me except leave me screaming and clinging to this small French Canadian doctor. 

Even so, that summer, I decided to perform the Epley maneuver three times a day until I cured this thing. The whole ordeal was made worse because my husband and I were spending the summer living in a trailer, which, after many years of not taking care of it – this after the house fell down – was now without running water or a toilet. It took me a good hour to work through the anxiety to do the maneuver. And then afterward, I would have to walk into the woods, throw up, and just lie wherever I fell, panting, covered in sweat, completely exhausted, knowing that in two or three hours, I was going to make myself go through this all again. 

Naturally, because things come in threes, that summer, I also started to go through menopause. No hot sweats. If only. Rather, I was plagued by the most insane thoughts, married with profound dread, sprinkled with paranoia, violent dreams, and worst of all; I didn’t seem to be able to drink alcohol, which would’ve been an enormous help at this point. I would’ve taken heroin to make the symptoms stop. As many will attest, for those who have gone through a particularly violent menopause, the people we love the most become the main target of one's wrath, spite, and bitterness. The fights with my husband were epic. One battle culminated with me kicking the car door so hard I completely dented it. Luckily for my husband, he had a lot of assignments that summer and was away a good deal. It was during one of his absences that the third thing happened, one that very nearly drove me over the edge. Alone, I was awoken by a country and western song playing very loudly. It took me a moment to realize that the song was in my head. It was a song I’d never heard before and which I can’t even remember now. This was no annoying earworm. The tune was so front and center that there was no space for any other thoughts. It was utterly terrifying. For the next five years, I had one song or another blasting away. The worst was Whitney Houston’s “Somebody Who Loves Me.” Over time, the whole song was whittled down to "…somebody who, somebody who, somebody who", loud and clear nonstop for weeks and weeks.

I quickly figured out that if I had something else on, like the radio, my brain would glom onto that, and I would have moments of reprieve, but as soon as I was in silence and left to my own devices, a song would come back. To get work done; I literally had to move my thoughts around this block of song. Naturally, I tried everything on earth to cure myself. I went to an acupuncturist. I went to a hypnotist. Not to mention a fleet of Western doctors. My lowest point was, after describing what I was experiencing, one doctor said, "You got me. This sounds like something only Oliver Sacks would know how to deal with." 

The next summer, we drove out to L.A. to visit my sister. During the six-day drive, I spent most of the time counting powerlines, hoping that would drive the songs out of my head. Didn't work. I tried imagining a tunnel in my brain so I could force the songs to fly down the sluice gate, out through my nose. That didn’t work, either. By the time we got to my sister's, I had started wrapping elastic bands around my wrist, which I would snap every time a song came into my head. My wrist looked like I was a bondage queen. Sitting one morning having breakfast, I started madly snapping the elastic band, until it broke. My sister found it incredibly amusing and could not stop laughing. She also found me in my room with my face in a pillow, screaming. 

I know myself well enough that I seem to be on a five-year plan with my afflictions.  After suffering five years with my vertigo, and more harrowing, performing endless Epley maneuvers, I finally looked up on YouTube alternate remedies to vertigo and found something called the half-somersault maneuver, where you sit on your haunches, lean forward, and tuck your head towards your stomach, then raise it quickly, thus repositioning the errant crystals. I did it once and was instantly cured. 

Now I was just left with songs. As a last-ditch effort, I bought an electric shock machine and was planning to electrocute myself, hearing that it was supposed to be a perfect reset for the brain, but I never had the balls to do it. Eventually, true to form, after five years the songs started to loosen their grip. 

I wish I could say that these things have taught me some sort of lesson. It hasn't. Except the firm belief that the brain is one weird entity. I had about a year of relative peace when Covid hit, and one day, I was out walking my dog when I became aware of a buzzing, hissing, ringing in my ear. It was so loud I couldn’t even hear the traffic on the street. My shoulders slumped. I knew what it was; I had tinnitus. Again, I started the endless pursuit of a cure, knowing full well there wasn’t one. But I am about four years into it and live in hope that silence will descend any day now. But do I want it? I quail at the thought of what my brain might come up with next.

Bex lives in France with her husband and their dog. She is the author of the novels (Under Bex Brian) Promiscuous Unbound and Radius. At present, she’s working on a new novel entitled, The Last Lover.