"I don't stab myself in the head very often!"

I found myself exclaiming. I hadn’t actually stabbed myself in the head, but created a superficial yet conspicuous scratch on my forehead. With a kitchen knife. I don’t know quite what happened, I was cutting up an apple at the time. I also have a more substantial cut on my finger from the same process, although I had acquired that a moment earlier. Certainly no intent.

Fatigue is far worse to deal with than pain. Real full-on fatigue which attacks your very essence. I think therefore I am; I can’t think therefore I am not. There are automatic processes, going to the loo when one’s bladder is full, washing and drying hands afterwards, this sort of thing. These remain pretty much intact, although evidently those interruptions that occur can be dangerous when one has a knife in one’s hand or is working with heat or water.

And it is miserable. Not my head, which doesn’t hurt at all and will have healed up completely before we visit my parents and I have to make excuses (the black eye sustained in similarly bizarre circumstances close to my twenty-first birthday invited some suspicion). But on the inside, having no mind. Which is of course a slight exaggeration, but I might as well have for what's left during such periods.

That particular period has obviously passed now, thus my ability to operate a computer, string sentences together etc. And it is only ever a short time, really; a few hours usually, a few days at most. But it is the worst thing. By far.