So what *does* it feel like to lose your mind?

[jducoeur]

I have to admit, I'm starting to worry about myself a bit. For the past year or two, I've been noticing that my memory, never the best to begin with, has been slowly weakening. I've been losing words stuck to the tip of my tongue pretty often, which is unsettling for a linguaphile like myself. Just a short while ago, I managed to get two people I know entirely mixed up -- for a moment, I was quite sure that person A was person B, and managed to quite embarass myself. In general, I've simply been feeling slow and stupid altogether too often lately, not a sensation I'm used to or care for. I'm used to seeing the world with a sharp mental focus that has gotten slightly blurred of late -- I can regain it when I try, but it requires a sort of mental squint.

Realistically, it's probably just a combination of stress and lack of sleep taking a gradual toll on my head; odds seem good that, if I can overcome those, I'll bounce back. And a certain amount of slowdown is to be expected over time. But in the meantime, it's scary stuff. Flowers for Algernon was a very influential story on me when I was young, and gradually fading like that is one of the creepiest things I can imagine...

Comments

[lady-guenievre.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that I'm losing my ability to remember random trivia, which used to be fairly important to me (I was on Jeopardy when I was 16, for instance). I think that <lj user="antoniseb" is right about it being something you have to work on though...use it or lose it. And going crazy / losing my intelligence, Algernon-style, has always been one of my nightmares as well.