SensoryOverload
Dialogue with Brain: Shutdown Between Platforms
me
Brain… am I dead? Or was that just the end of Italian public transport?
brain
You're alive, but if you don't find isotonic drink soon, you'll restart like Windows 98, with blue screen and screeching.
me
I was lost all day — metro, routes, names that didn't seem to exist, a map like an escape room with no exit.
brain
With each station life was dying in me, Villa Fiorita, Cernusco, who designed this, Dali on LSD?
me
Maybe I should have taken a taxi.
brain
No. A taxi means small talk, that 'car smell,' a driver saying things somewhere between espresso and philosophy. And me? I would have shut down like a shell. That wasn't fear. It was risk management for a leak of consciousness.
me
So there was march mode, watch — training, headphones — full, one song, on repeat, a sound tunnel.
brain
And finally: calm. I no longer had to analyze platforms or try to recognize names that did not exist, just step, rhythm, step, rhythm. I was only a body, and that was OK.
me
Grass scent, remember? Hot, something lived in grass, like... not everything was dead.
brain
Who would have thought you would need to walk '?' km just to hear a cricket. Maybe nature was trying to say: 'sorry the city let you down, have a leaf.'
me
Irony: to feel calm had to get lost, overheat and strip from resources.
brain
Don't confuse with metaphysics, this wasn't gratitude, it was: 'oh no, something else alive besides me'.
me
And it made more sense than Google Maps, the M2 line, or any man asking 'serve aiuto?'
brain
Especially the one who asked three times whether you knew the metro did not go here. I knew. My legs were already screaming.
me
Road closed, dark, grass no longer rustled but growled, this was end, Brain.
brain
Do not dramatize, you were still alive, but admit it: if someone jumped out with 'e è chiusa' one more time, we would throw ourselves into the bushes and pretend to be stones together.
me
Almost midnight, 3% resources, location: nowhere, route: alien project.
brain
This wasn't VR, it was Italy, simply Italy. 🇮🇹 And lack of my cognitive functions.
brain
Anyway, from what level was this decision – WHY are we here?
me
Don't know, wasn't me, it was ADHD (where is it now anyway? Creative support would help). It clicked 'sign up', wrote emails, found flight, chose workshop and said: 'will be great!'. And then? Did exit stage left, left us with backpack, map from cosmos and depleted body.
brain
YES! With a transfer, with control, with a machine you had to 'touch, but not too long,' with a ticket like a dungeon key, with a metro that multiplied like an octopus on stims.
me
There was no spirituality, no 'getting to know yourself,' it was: survive without eye contact with reality.
brain
And now what? A two-day workshop? On a social battery of minus seven? Without a cognitive filter? With resources at the level of 'a band-aid and faith in coincidence'?
me
Yes, and we'll sit there with headphones, in glasses with a medical filter (which everyone takes for sunglasses and nobody believes is the result of a research project titled 'how to choose a filter so the brain does not explode'), without eye contact, without speech.
me
It does not matter what anyone thinks, because 'nothing about us without us' is just a slogan on a poster, and in practice every expert on everything has long since known what we should feel, think, and do.
brain
Maybe at least that assistance on the way back? Because on the return trip we'll get lost again (unless ADHD comes back… though I would bet it already got enough dopamine). We'll be left alone with another migraine — the fourth in a row — with mental chaos, looking for a toilet in case the contents of the stomach decide to come back.
brain
Then ADHD (once we finally get back to the cottage) will sum it up: 'well, it was great, what an adventure, who could have predicted a 24-hour transport strike…' except that neither of us checked, because why check when you can suffer spontaneously.
me
Yeah... except that the lesson titled 'asking for help' in a world that does not understand us — still under construction.
CONCLUSION: add to the pre-travel checklist: check for strikes
Narrator
Narrator: This is where the story ended, not with a moral, but with that one song that will haunt dreams for three months, a new checklist item… and the naive faith that next time it really will be better.
Examples of self-regulation mechanisms:
- Headphones + one song on loop — protection from stimulus overload
- Rhythmic march: reducing tension through movement
- Cutting off social contact: glasses, no interaction
- Self-irony and dialogue with the brain: processing tension
- Minimal functionality mode: action without reflection
- Checklist: symbolic recovery of control
Self-regulation mechanisms often go unnoticed by others and are frequently misread as “weird behaviour,” “indifference,” “no reaction,” “shutting down,” or “strange facial expressions”… and so on. Coping does not always look aesthetic, but it makes sense if you know how to read it.