I learned about executive dysfunction when I was a teenager, in my A-level Psychology class. Psychology (with a capital P) tends to distinguish executive dysfunction from mental illness or clinical disorders, like anxiety, mood disorder, and psychosis. Executive dysfunction is most often linked to physical brain injury although more recently, executive dysfunction, or its pathological distinction as ‘executive function disorder’, is being linked to ADD as well.

Executive dysfunction is what we experience when we have difficulty with everyday cognitive processes. This is stuff like motor control, including walking and grasping with our hands; information processing, like listening, understanding, and planning; memory; communication, including speaking and language ability; and emotion management. It makes sense that brain damage affects various cognitive processes, differing according to the type of damage and the individual. What has never been clear to me is why science so frequently differentiates executive dysfunction from mental illness, despite so much overlap.

For the most part, executive dysfunction is considered a result of physical trauma, and in my six years of studying Psychology, I rarely came across mention of it as a symptom of mental illnesses like depression, anxiety disorder, or psychosis. Now, after sixteen years of living with mental illness, it’s evident that I’ve experienced a decline in various cognitive processes, and questions around executive dysfunction keep buzzing around in my head.

I’m writing this after a difficult weekend, at the end of a difficult few weeks of crippling depression. On Friday night, I had a crisis, and I’m only just coming out of that fight-or-flight(-or-freeze) mode, that unable to get out of bed mode, that crying for hours in the middle of the day mode. I’m coaxing myself back to some semblance of normality as I prepare for a long trip. I’m whispering to myself the way you do to a frightened animal, to encourage them back onto stable ground, to draw them to safety. I’m not judging myself for being in this state, though I hate myself for my failures.

This year, I’ve started to accept some of these failures. I’m recognising that I might not ever get my memory back. I can’t mentally hold onto things as well as I once could. My focus is blurry, my attention is jelly. I must do one thing at a time, always, otherwise I can’t do anything at all. I don’t plan well. I forget what I came in here to do, I forget items in my daily routine, I forget I forget I forget. These days, I only have the capacity to focus on today’s work, today’s tasks, and that capacity constricts tighter when my health gets worse until some days, I can only think about my next movement. Some days, I live in a tunnel of fog and all I can see are my feet stepping blindly into the murk.

I try to adapt to my older brain, the one with all these holes in it. I have a physical planner, I set reminders in my phone, I check my weekly calendar every day so I don’t forget what I’m doing and who I’m meeting. Still, I forget to use my planner. Some days are too overwhelming and I can only focus on what I’m doing right now and I end up unprepared for this evening or tomorrow or the day after. I try to be mindful of my clumsier body, these hands that shake so often, moments of disassociation, and the times when I just completely forget how to use an object in the same way that we can’t find the word we’re looking for.

This is executive dysfunction. This is my brain after years of unbearable lows, uninhibited highs, meds and drugs and poison smoke, and trauma, and trauma, and trauma.

On Friday, I went to see my favourite band, playing in London on a special tour after a four-year hiatus. I don’t know if they’ll play again. I don’t know if I’ll be able to afford to see them. They played an album that has been with me for a decade. They played music that I’ve danced to, sung to, learned guitar to, sobbed to, cut to. This is a band that saved my life and walked with me through the last ten years of joy, pain, breakups, isolation, hope and hopelessness. This music is intimate for me.

I queued for the barrier from 9.30am, the first time I’ve queued for a show since the last time they played back in 2014. I chose to go alone so that I could be in my feelings freely, without judgement, without jokes, without doing emotional labour for anyone else. I didn’t want to make my feelings smaller and easier, and I didn’t want to have to centre anyone else. In the queue, I met kind strangers who’ve been following this band since the beginning. I saw the disparity between us: they feel a personal connection to the people in the band, something I realised I’d left behind years ago. A bittersweet feeling; I’ve moved on from that. On Friday, I wasn’t here for these musicians, as much as I admire them, as much as I’m grateful for their work. I was there for me. I wanted this one night to be back on the barrier, to sweat, to break my voice yelling lyrics, to cry, to feel how much I’ve endured and survived and grown. I wanted this one night to be for me.

Twenty minutes into waiting on the barrier, I had a major panic attack and had to leave my place for fear of passing out. I sat by the wall and I cried.

I know that if this story belonged to someone I care about, I would hope that they could forgive themself. But this story belongs to me, and I know that I can’t forgive myself and my executive dysfunction, I can’t forgive my battered brain for this small act of betrayal.

I spent the rest of the evening feeling disconnected even as I sang along. I wanted one night to love myself, truly and fully. My brain couldn’t stand the prospect. As I sat against the wall in the dark, my brain reverted to old habits. It spoke steadily, calmly of my worthlessness, of my failure, of my helplessness in the face of mental illness. I’m not good enough. It was almost startling how quickly I could fall back into that place.

But it’s not quite as comfortable for me there as it once was. I no longer feel the safety in that type of self-loathing. It’s easier for me to accept that living with chronic mental illness and being a survivor of trauma means my brain is forever changed. It’s easier for me to accept that I’ll never be as smart, as quick, as certain as I used to be. It’s far harder to accept that I couldn’t make it through one night of self-love, of honouring my history, of recognising my strength. I spent that evening alone. One person asked me if I was okay, as they walked by on their way to the bar. Someone queuing for the toilets with me took one look at my blotchy face choking back tears, and immediately averted their gaze. Someone else spilled beer all over me as I sat in the dark and they laughed.

There’s nothing I can say that will alleviate this specific kind of loneliness I feel. I can’t accurately express how much this event meant to me, how much I needed to be on the barrier, where I can see clearly, where I have something to lean on, where I can feel the crowd heaving and sweating with me. I needed this, I failed. I needed this for myself, I failed myself.

On Saturday morning, I got myself out of bed and attended a workshop in east London. I cried that afternoon, in a community garden, after being misgendered, after having my identity stolen and re-appropriated by a stranger. On Sunday, I cried about losing home and I cried for forgotten people on the streets in east. Yesterday, I cried for myself and for the experiences, the love, the people, and the chances my mental illness has taken from me. Executive dysfunction, mood disorder, pathologised personality turns every day into a fight. Some days, we lose. Most days, we survive.

Heavy Machinery is written by Zainabb Hull and powered by brain fog and a broken heart.

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