Losing My Mind

I've been diagnosed with dementia and I take medication to slow it down.  It's a very strange thing to be aware of my brain fading.

I want to share it, record it, while I can.  Maybe that will be for decades more, who knows? I'm already afraid that sometimes I don't make sense and I'm embarrassed by the frequency of discovering, one way or another, that I'm repeating myself ad nauseam.  But the worst part is when I have moments of panic because I'm just lost.  Fortunately, it's not a frequent event.  But sometimes, in the shower or in the kitchen or even in bed at night, I just don't know what the heck I'm doing.  I can't orient.  It's bad enough to stand in my kitchen and have to think which drawer the flatware is kept, but it's downright terrifying to not know what flatware is about.

It's just my brain though.  Just as the other stuff that's going on is just my body.  The real me, the core of me is still in here.  Perhaps it can be thought of as an onion.  The outer skins are crinkly and brittle and falling off.  Big deal.  It happens.  A few layers down the juicier layers of the onion are starting to be brown and soft and not so great.  Eh. . . . . . so. . . . . it happens.  Sometimes though, when one cuts into a seemingly good onion, one finds that the outer layers seem okay, but the core of the onion is yuck.  I am thankful that at present, that is NOT me.

I think I'm thankful for that.  It's rather petrifying to think that there might come a time when the outer two thirds of the onion are rotten but the very center is still in here, trying to be oniony.  Possibly the worst thing I can think of is to be unable to communicate.

But if that is my lot, my destiny - whatever you want to call it - my lesson, then I will try to learn it.  My life has been so amazing that if now I fade away slowly rather than just have an aneurism blow suddenly or be hit by a meteor or something, I guess that, too, will be a worthwhile adventure.

That's a new concept for me and perhaps it will be a temporary one, but I believe there is a reason for even the silliest bits of life.  As my Hindu friend, Sushil, puts it, we should indulge Mother's play.  I don't know.  And I know I don't know.  

I do want to try to take you along on this journey, however.  If I rewrite the same thing 47 times in a row, please forgive me.  I actually can deal with that better than when I can't remember  the word I want.  And I can handle that better than when I can't remember what writing is about.

There is just so much of us that is not attached to words, and that is the part that I want so to communicate to you, in hopes that it will help someone else along the way.  I'm not much of a painter or sculpture.  I'm more of a wordsmith.  Irony.  Sometimes it sucks in a bad way.

There is another scary thing that is happening.  My personality is changing.  My emotions aren't always in order.  I don't know how else to explain it.  I don't like it, but I don't think I dislike it as much as those around me.  I'm pissing people off without meaning to.  Part of it is that I've lost my filter.  I never had a very good filter, but it's pretty much gone now.  Things just pop out.  Why did I tell my internist that his tie was awful?  We weren't discussing ties or fashion or anything along that line.  I just happened to notice it.  It was really very ugly.  And instead of just thinking it, it came right out of my mouth.

That's weird, because often the things I want to come out of my mouth just won't.  And sometimes something totally unrelated comes out.  It used to be just words.   I told my brother to bring his lawn chair, when I meant I wanted him to bring his chain saw.  But now sometimes a whole sentence, or string of words comes out and I only realize when I hear them that they have seemingly no relationship to what was in my head.  And all too often I say things that aren't even my words.  It's as if there are strings of words flying by all the time and now and then a string gets caught up and comes out of my mouth.  They aren't my words.  Just my mouth.

It's embarrassing and scary to write this stuff because I know how crazy it sounds.  Trust me, it sounds crazy because it is crazy.  All the little sparks and snaps and miracles that happen constantly in that grey and white organ in our skulls - all those things we never understand, but take for granted, are no longer things on which I'm able to rely.  It'll make a person a bit skittish, let me tell you.

But I hope to hang in here.  I'm so grateful that I'm so smart.  I think that will somehow help me explain what is happening.  Who knows, maybe it won't help at all.  We'll see, I guess.  I feel an urgency to try to share the journey.