How My Brain Tells Time With BIND
Most people tell time with clocks.
With seconds, minutes, hours.
My brain doesn’t do that anymore.
With BIND, time becomes a physical sensation —
a weight, a pressure, a stretch, a tightening.
A minute is not a minute.
A minute is whatever my nervous system decides it is.
Sometimes it’s a blink.
Sometimes it’s a lifetime.
I don’t feel “ten minutes till my dose.”
I feel ten universes.
Ten expansions of pain.
Ten stretches of waiting in a body that refuses to settle.
I feel time by:
- the ache in my bones
- the burn in my nerves
- the tremor in my hands
- the rising tide of withdrawal
- the fading edge of a dose wearing off
- the anticipation of “almost but not quite enough” relief
That is how my brain keeps track.
It doesn’t say:
“It’s 11:44.”
It says:
“You survived another stretch.”
It doesn’t say:
“Six minutes.”
It says:
“Hold on.
Just hold on.”
When other people wait, they pass time.
When I wait, I travel through it —
inch by inch, breath by breath,
feeling every second like it has bones and teeth.
That is how my brain tells time with BIND.
Not by numbers on a clock,
but by the distance between myself
and the next moment
I can finally exhale.