Amoebas in my head

I like memories.

Memories like those things from the past. I think they’re neat because they’re just images yet they have the power to take me back to the past. They’re like a time machine but only in my head.

Anyway, my memories are becoming a problem because I have brain-eating amoebas in my head.

I have an idea what they look like: they’re small like lice. And I know that amoebas aren’t supposed to be that way, but they just are because they’re in MY head, so they’re a different type of amoeba. Like a “me” amoeba.

I feel it when they’re hibernating; of course, they hibernate, I would’ve lost myself by now if they didn’t. They do it for two weeks or less. For some reason, I wouldn’t feel them moving inside my head, there’s no tiny knuckle-knuckle noise and my brain is at peace. I always hoped they’d just hibernate forever. Well, they can leave but then I wouldn’t want that. They’re a part of me now, I’m the current version of myself because they’d gnaw my brain out until it changed shape, until I became a new person.

When they’re not hibernating, they just feast on my brain, like every part of it. They probably love it so much in my head because when they’re awake I hear them a lot, they actually wouldn’t keep the noise down even when I try to shake my head or knock it repeatedly. I wish they could hear my thoughts so they’d know how frustrating their noise is, just so they’d keep it down. But then those thoughts they’d also gnaw away.

I also feel it when they continuously bite and munch on my brain. I know because when they do, my head brews and I can’t stop it, it’s probably because they’re somehow taking over my entire control system. As much as I like them here, I don’t like it when they make a week’s worth of meal out of my brain. Like I said, I feel their every bite and it’s not a very pleasant feeling.

Then, when they fill themselves with every cell of my sulcus and tissue, I feel my brain getting smaller, and I get light-headed, literally. And my memory? They go away and I have no choice but to wait for the amoebas to hibernate so my brain would grow back, and the memories will fill their places again. So the past can come to visit. But sometimes they don’t, their place in my head just sits empty forever and suddenly there’s no past. I don’t like it because then I’m just an empty shell with no history trying to remember things.

And when my brain becomes smaller, those emotions I spoke of, they drain them all away after a week of feasting on them. More than a week then I just feel my head becoming empty, if you open it there’s almost nothing there. They make me completely lose myself. It’s a build-up. They kill my memory, and then they’d make me sad, and then suddenly I’m anxious, then angry, and then it’s all at once. It’s like that feeling you have when you’re anticipating a sneeze, it’s various emotions all at once, and then I’m just empty.

I’ve completely lost myself and my brain to these amoebas.

It’s the worst feeling. I fear that they’ll come back once my brain has regained its full self and leave it empty again. I fear it and I don’t know if I could ever do something about it.

It’s not only unpleasant to me but it’s more unpleasant to the people around me. I’m starting to think that they know about these amoebas in my head. Whenever I feel them feasting my head empty, the people around me would just know, they’d say I’m different and suddenly scared of me. It’s not my fault that I have these amoebas living in my head. Or maybe it IS my fault.

These amoebas can’t be here forever, and yet I still wouldn’t make them go away. I don’t know when I will, I don’t know if I ever could. Even when I’m scary, and they’re scary, aren’t they a part of me now? Aren’t they me now? Maybe one day I’ll be able to let them go, to make them leave.

Maybe there will no longer be fear and dread about the thought of them waking up. Maybe I’ll be a more pleasant version of myself, a pleasant version that wouldn’t only be pleasant for two weeks. But for now, I’ll let them leave me empty just until my brain comes back to the person that I was before they came to eat all my memories and all my pleasant emotions away.

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Janiel Chloe Rivera, 20, is a psychology student. She plans to pursue creative writing after graduating.