Shauna M. Ahern - Enough: Notes From a Woman Who Has Finally Found It

B efore I could say these words out loud, I stayed silent.

I tried to remind myself how to say anything coherent. I practiced each sentence three times in my mind, stutter stepping and stumbling over words that felt unfamiliar on my tongue. Numb. What does that mean? I said the sentence again, without saying it aloud. Face?

What is a face again? I reached up with my left hand to feel the space between my ear and chin and found it gone. I couldnt feel it at all. The left side of my tongue felt thicker than normal. My head hurt when I tried to find the words receding into shadows and grey garbles. If I didnt say it soon, I might not talk again.

I cleared my throat and looked around the cooking studio. Is it weird that I cant feel the left side of my face?

I remember my friend Trishs eyes darting at me fast. I remember the way my EMT friend Ken put the palms of his hands on the desk for a beat before he looked at me directly. I remember how there was silence in the room, matching the silence in my head. Then Ken said, Yes, it is.

T hat morning, I had woken up feeling off. My eyes felt as though they were bulging out of their sockets, especially my left one. Is it possible to sleep the wrong way on your eye? I wondered as soon as I woke up. My oldest, dearest friend in the world, Sharon, was staying at our house. She commiserated when I said I had a bad headache. I drank my third cup of coffee while she started her first. Everything had felt entangled latelytoo many emails and bills to pay, too many meetings to hold. We were scrambling for money, again. But we had a possible deal with a company that wanted to make a bread with our recipe, using our logo, for the national market. Our next cookbooks publication day loomed, only three months away. We had opened our gluten-free flour company for business three months before, and we spent part of each day packing boxes of flour into larger boxes, then driving them to the post office uptown before five oclock. Our six-year-old daughter and fifteen-month-old son deserved more of our attention. I woke up most nights, two or three or six times, circling items in our bank account in my mind, panicking at the gap I could see coming in a few weeks if something didnt change. Exercise? No time. My meditation practice? Mostly forgotten, except for two-minute sessions in the car between dropping off kids and reaching our cooking studio to start working.

I told as much of this to Sharon as I could, then cried in ugly spasms. She hugged me and patted my shoulder. For thirty years we had traded turns taking care of each other. It was my turn to be a mess. I collected myself after her kindness. I reminded myself what everyone said: The first year of running your own business is hard. Everyone has been through this. Hold on.

I noticed, though, how much Id had to leave out of this jumbled story, because the words flew away from my brain before I could settle them down onto my tongue.

The morning had been tough. Trish was working with us to lift our nascent business into a thriving empire. But she seemed frustrated, since we couldnt seem to settle on the next five intellectual property deals we wanted to pursue. Ken had volunteered to work with us recently, since he was a whiz at Internet promotions. He chimed in on ideas for flour-packaging design.

Danny, my husband, had stayed mostly quiet, as he does. He takes in everything before he forms opinions. He doesnt feel the need to talk. He stood in the studio kitchen chopping carrots and prepping dishes we would be photographing that afternoon.

I sat at the table trying to pretend that everything was fine. No problems here. Ill keep nodding. Trish looked at me once in a while, probably confused as to why I wasnt talking. I rarely have a problem talking. She had told me, a couple of months before, You are one of the most creative people I have ever met in my life. Im not sure it was entirely a compliment, since she was referring to the dozen new ideas I discussed with her on a daily basis, my hands wildly gesticulating in the air, my words zooming around the room.

But I had no new ideas that day.

Danny said his see-you-soons to us all, since he needed to pick up our daughter from kindergarten. I noticed he had a full cup of hot coffee in his mason jar with a lid. Instead of waving and staying at the meeting, I stood up, awkwardly. I followed him outside to the car.

Why didnt you make me coffee? I stuttered at him angrily. He looked at me sideways, his eyes widening. We dont normally fight. I dont care about petty shit. Ive been through enough to know that tiny fights about territory are normally about something else. But that morning, I couldnt see beyond it. I needed that coffee for my throbbing headache. Maybe coffee would help stop the weird tingling prickles at my temples.

He apologized and drove away, the dust kicking up from the back tires. I walked back in, slowly, noticing that my left leg felt weaker than it had when I woke up. And the left side of my face felt numb.

Instead of going back to the table, I hobbled into the bathroom. For a moment, I leaned against the counter, noticing that my left hip had started to feel numb too. The phone. I needed Google. I searched