There are so many things that happen day to day in our lives and we don’t really notice half of them, it is often not because we don’t care or they don’t matter, more that there is a limit to what we can actually deal with mentally. Imagine that that is no longer the case, and somehow your mind is missing out the important things as well, that your ability to holding to a line of thought or idea, is slipping, any distraction becomes a cue to your brain to forget what you were about to do, or were in the middle of doing.

We all have the minor side, the walking into a room and totally forgetting why you went there, that always comes back and it in itself is not a sign or symptom of anything other than being human. Those of us with memory problems live with this one constantly and we all find a way of dealing with it or covering it up, even to ourselves. I have been told repeatedly that the worst thing you can do is enter the room, find you can’t remember what for and then do something else instead. That doesn’t help you, it just makes you feel less stupid, as that is how you feel believe me, so stupid that you try to hide it even from yourself. No what you are meant to do, is back track so that you complete the intended journey. Well that might work for some or it might work when it isn’t that bad, but it doesn’t work for me at all. I find myself standing in another room wondering what I was doing, keep that up and it might be funny to ever thought it was a good idea, but it would drive me mad very quickly. If I can’t remember what I was there for I don’t worry about it, I do something else well at least that way the precious energy I used getting there isn’t wasted. On bad days I leave things all over the place and then have to try and find them, full glasses of coke have been waiting all round the house for me, as I have filled them and taken them with me so I don’t forget them, then put them down while I did my second task, returned to the living room without them, but I can’t remember where it is, so I go for another, only to find the first later on. Yes it can be funny, but it can also be dangerous.

A long time ago during the day I had to restrict myself when alone to using one ashtray only, if I was going to be a while in another room, then despite actually having ashtrays all over the place, my one comes with me. That way I can’t leave burning cigarettes all over the place. The biggest danger though is cooking, I now burn as much past and rice as we eat, I put them on to boil and as I get bored waiting I come back here and forget until they have boiled dry and are smoking gently, or on occasions not so gently. All these things are frustrating and a little dangerous, it is unlikely that a pan of burnt pasta will kill anyone, the biggest problem was none of the things above, the biggest was the frustrations causes at times and that horrid feeling that you are not in control.

When you are not in control of your mind what are you in control of? My home is small, but I daily loose things, I constantly find my self not knowing what I am doing, or doing things again as I don’t think I have done them, or that I have done them correctly in the first place. Things that last year I would have taken a really short time to complete, now take hours, there is nothing I can complete without being distracted and finding myself doing something else, I don’t even see that distraction any longer, there isn’t a part of me that can continue on the same line for any length of time. Just writing this has taken a ridicules length of time, I have wondered away twice from my PC, read emails, checked twitter, redirected my links on my Ads and went to the loo when I didn’t need to. Completion of any one task before doing something else is impossible.

As I always say there is good to be found in everything, you may have noted that I said “the biggest problem was none of those above”, I rarely now get frustrated by it, or worry about looking stupid, it really is a ‘was‘ not an ‘is‘, why, well in someways this should really scare me, now I don’t care, it is as though just like part of my brain stopped me remembering, another has stopped me from worrying, I just breeze through it without a care in the world, and now happily laugh when I find myself putting my full bottle of coke into the dishwasher instead of the fridge, or find a hairbrush in the sink. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing, it is like a lot of things now I no longer worry because it is what it is and I can’t change it.