By Sherri Thompson
Dear Jack,
I remember the day we first met, my young, seventeen year old hand reaching out to shake yours in anticipation and anxiety. You were a celebrity. I'd seen you everywhere at the best parties and with the coolest people. Finally, there I was, really touching you.
I recall that you weren't really that pleasant, but after a while, I started to warm up to you. My skin felt flushed, and I started to sweat. Yet a chilling, inner core feeling, imperceptible, lay underneath those warm fuzzies. Unbeknownst to me, you had invaded my brain control centers, inhibited my temperature controls, and increased blood flow to my skin. Although rough in the beginning, most people gain a tolerance for your presence, and I couldn't turn my back on you and your social lubricating effects acting upon my cerebral cortex. I couldn't really think clearly or feel very much, but I became talkative and confident. I was glad I met you, and you started to look twenty-five percent better as time went on. I wasn't thinking clearly, but I really didn't care.
So then you managed to get further under my skin into the hippocampus and septal area and messed with my emotions and memory. Just like all the other boys, you made me fall for you, and then cry and be irrational, and then forget all about it. Sigh. I wanted to lash out and hit you, but you had disabled my cerebellum. I was uncoordinated and clumsy. I was back in junior high school, experiencing growth asynchronicity and bad skin. I felt sick and dizzy. I couldn't balance, everything was blurry. You did this to me!!!
Once you got to my hypothalamus, I wanted you so badly. I was angry and emotional and disoriented. But you looked so good! While my sexual hormones were raging, though, my anti-diuretic hormones were not being released and my kidneys began to produce more urine by reabsorbing less water. At this moment I knew that our relationship was a double-edged sword of unrequited love.
As my mascara was smeared by the tears and sweat on my face, I kept a constant vigil at the bathroom doors. My reticular formation in the medulla signaled me to end it all to float away into a land of slumber with slower breathing and temperature control. My eyelids began to droop, and away I went to Dream Land
I dreamt of being you in my brain and having complete power over me. I watched as a glutamate just floated around in synaptic space and felt powerful. I knew what it was like to be that neurotransmitter, alone in space with no receptor to hold me.
Then I envisioned how you boost the inhibitory actions of the neurotransmitter GABA at the GABA receptor. I remembered being depressed, thinking you were cheating on me with someone named Gaby. Now, I know you were stifling her too. As I floated through the sulci and gyri of my dreaming brain, I saw the further hold you had upon me by releasing dopamine, making me feel motivated and rewarded for being with you. You even messed with my opioid peptides and made me feel less pain and more euphoria. Only the powerful Naloxone, a medication that inhibits the function of opioid receptors and blocks the release of dopamine, could have stopped you. Where was Naloxone when I needed him?
You activated some of my serotonin receptors, added to my feelings of reward, and increased my addiction for your love. You increased my tolerance for your wretched mistreatment by making your absence painful in withdrawal, and intoxicated me through my physiological functions. We got too seriously involved too quickly. It was a mistake, but you had me hooked with your reinforcement and my neuroadaptation. If only I could take back those years!
As my body's unregulated NMDA function combined with the down-regulated inhibitory transmission, my brain became hyperexcited, making me think we could work it out again. But it stressed me all over again, and I was releasing cortisol everywhere. My friends kept telling me to leave you, but my mood and my metabolism were altered.
My body learned to tolerate your presence, and I soon found out that I was sensitized to it when I tried to get some space and see you only intermittently. When we were together all the time, you changed me. But when we took some time off, I became only more stimulated when I saw you. I craved you even more.
But NO MORE!!! No longer will I spend my hard-earned $5.48 per week on you. I can't stand how addicted I've become to your presence emotionally and physically. I am not a slave to a cold glass exterior. It's over. I want someone dependable and good, not distilled.
Sincerely,
Vera
Free from a relationship on the rocks
