Gnarled Roots

His frontal lobe was twisted and gnarled like the roots of the Shepherd's tree in the Kalahari Desert.

The roots of the Shepherd's tree can run 230 feet deep. Imagine the difficulty of tracing an individual root all the way through.

The thoughts in his brain, after conception, wandered aimlessly. There was no cohesion, no connection or identifiable logic. No follow-through.

Each thought was independent, eventually starved and dying before ever getting the chance to interact with other thoughts to arrive at logic.

This was why he suffered.

Life was incomprehensible, he could make no sense of it. Could not plan, could not solve, could not define or navigate. He bounced from moment to moment, self-made crisis to self-made crisis, like a blind man in a maze, never learning, never gaining the wisdom from experience that some did.

He screamed silently. And did not understand why.

This is the end result of a brain that is battered endlessly, tortured from within, assaulted from without. A  brain, once healthy, that adapts to constant pain and confusion, criticism, and contradiction by forming gnarled roots. In defense. And eventual self-destruction.

Gnarled roots that choke off hope.

And reduce life to a pointless endeavor.