My Brain Is Broken

I told my mom once, after a fight, that it felt like my brain was broken.

We were getting past it. The fight had been about empathy again — her frustration with what looked like my inability to show it. I don’t remember the specifics. I remember the feeling of being accused of something I couldn’t fix, couldn’t explain, couldn’t even fully see from her side because the thing she wanted from me required a brain that worked differently than mine does.

“It feels like my brain is broken,” I said.

I meant it.

What Broken Means #

It’s not one thing. It’s a constellation.

There’s the executive dysfunction. I know what I need to do. I want to do it. The steps are clear in my head. But the signal that says “start now” doesn’t fire. I sit there, aware of the task, aware of the time passing, aware that I’m not doing it, and still I can’t cross the gap between knowing and doing. It’s not procrastination. Procrastination is choosing to do something else. This is wanting to do the thing and being unable to initiate.

There’s the word-finding. I know what I want to say. The concept is fully formed. But the word isn’t there. I reach for it and my hand closes on air. In conversation, this means I pause, or say the wrong word, or say something close but not quite right, and the other person fills in the blank or waits or gets impatient. In writing, it means I stare at a sentence that’s almost right and can’t find the one word that would fix it.

There’s the brain fog. Some days it’s like thinking through static. I can do simple things — scroll, read short passages, answer yes or no — but anything that requires holding multiple pieces of information at once, or planning more than one step ahead, or making a decision with consequences, feels like trying to assemble furniture in the dark.

There’s the anxiety. It layers over everything else. If I can’t find a word, I worry about how I sound. If I can’t start a task, I worry about what people think. If I’m foggy, I worry that this is the day the fog doesn’t lift. The anxiety doesn’t cause the dysfunction, but it makes every failure feel like a moral one.

And underneath all of it, there’s the need to be told what to do. Not because I’m incapable of deciding. Because the initiation barrier is so high that without someone or something to push me past it, I stay stuck. An adult who needs prompting like a child. That’s how it feels. That’s the part I hate the most.

The Gap #

The hardest thing to explain is the gap between what I can do and what I can do consistently.

I was valedictorian. I scored in the 86th percentile for verbal comprehension, the 99th for working memory. I can analyze complex systems, write essays that move people, build software, design games. When the conditions are right and the initiation barrier is down, I’m capable of work that surprises people.

But the conditions are rarely right. And the initiation barrier is almost never down on its own.

So the same person who was valedictorian can’t reliably start a task without help. The same person who writes about disability policy and AI architecture can’t always find the word for “refrigerator” in conversation. The same person who built a game engine from scratch needs someone to say “it’s time to eat now” or the meal doesn’t happen.

This gap is what people don’t see. They see the output — the essay, the code, the argument — and assume the machinery that produced it works the same way theirs does. It doesn’t. The output happens when everything lines up, which is maybe twenty percent of the time. The other eighty percent is me sitting in front of something I want to do, unable to begin.

The Fights #

The fight with my mom wasn’t the first time someone I loved was frustrated by something I couldn’t control. It won’t be the last.

The pattern is always the same. They see what looks like a choice — not trying, not caring, not paying attention. They don’t see the internal experience. They don’t see me wanting to do the thing and being unable to cross the gap. They don’t see the word I can’t find, the task I can’t start, the fog I can’t think through.

So they get frustrated. And I get defensive, or I shut down, or I try to explain and can’t find the words for that either. And afterward, when we’re both tired and the fight is over, I’m left with the same feeling I always have: my brain is broken, and the people I love are paying the price for something none of us can fix.

My mom wasn’t wrong to be frustrated. She was carrying more than anyone should have to carry, and she needed things from me that I couldn’t give her in the way she needed them. The problem wasn’t her. The problem wasn’t me either. The problem was a gap between two brains that worked in fundamentally different ways, and no amount of love or effort was going to close it.

The Computer #

There’s one place where my brain doesn’t feel quite so broken. It’s the computer.

On the computer, I can type instead of speak, which means the word-finding has more time. I can revise. I can pause without someone waiting. I can use tools that reduce the number of steps between wanting and doing. And now, with AI, I have something that can take a vague intention and turn it into action — an assistant that doesn’t need me to hold every step in my head, that remembers what I was working on, that can pick up where I left off.

So when I’m stuck everywhere else — can’t start the task, can’t find the words, can’t push through the fog — I go back to the computer. It’s not avoidance. It’s the one place I can make progress. The one place where the gap between what I’m capable of and what my brain will let me do actually narrows.

But to the people who love me, it doesn’t look that way.

It looks like I’m choosing the computer over what I should be doing. It looks like I can focus on writing or coding or building something, so why can’t I focus on the thing they need from me? It looks like I’m retreating into a screen while real life piles up around me.

My mom asked that question more than once. If she can do that, why can’t she do this? It’s a fair question. From the outside, it looks like the same person doing two different things — one willingly, one not. The natural conclusion is that I could do the other thing too, if I wanted to. That I’m choosing the computer over responsibility. That I’m not trying. That I’m afraid.

I understand why it looks that way. But it’s wrong.

The computer isn’t where I go to avoid hard things. It’s where I go because it’s the only place the hard things feel possible. The same brain that can’t initiate a simple task in the physical world can write an essay or build a game engine or troubleshoot a server because the computer removes some of the friction. It flattens the steps. It holds the context. It doesn’t require me to find words in real time or sequence actions from memory or push past an initiation barrier that feels like a wall.

When I’m on the computer, I’m not avoiding life. I’m finding the one version of life where my brain works.

I wish the people I love could see that. I wish they could see the stuckness that comes before the computer — the hours of wanting to do the thing and being unable to start. I wish they could see that the computer isn’t the distraction. It’s the ramp.

What Helps #

Not much, honestly. But some things.

Tools that reduce the number of steps between wanting and doing. A system that remembers what I was working on so I don’t have to reconstruct context from scratch. An assistant that can take a vague intention — “I need to do the thing with the files” — and figure out what I mean and do it or walk me through it. These don’t fix my brain. They just don’t add to the weight.

People who understand that initiation is a disability issue, not a character flaw. Who can say “do you want me to help you get started?” without making it sound like they’re talking to a child. Who know that prompting isn’t patronizing if it’s what I asked for.

And writing. Writing is the one thing where the gap sometimes closes on its own. Where the words come more easily than they do in speech, where I can pause and revise and find the right word without someone waiting. Writing is where my brain feels least broken. That’s part of why I do it.

The Truth #

My brain isn’t actually broken. I know that. It’s just built differently, and the world it has to navigate was built for brains that work another way. The broken feeling comes from the friction between the two.

But knowing that doesn’t make the feeling go away. It doesn’t make the initiation barrier lower or the words easier to find. It doesn’t stop the fights or the frustration or the shame.

So I live with it. I build systems around it. I use tools that reduce the friction. I try to explain it to the people I love, even when the explanation itself requires words I can’t always find.

And on the days when nothing works and the gap feels unbridgeable, I remind myself that the same brain that can’t start a simple task also wrote this. That the same person who needs prompting to eat also built a career out of words. That broken isn’t the right word, even when it’s the only one that fits.