A haven for creative people living with mental illness. This is the place where you can tell it like it is, not yet another place where you have to pretend to be someone you've been told you should be.
I can no longer
ignore the fact that my mother is showing signs of cognitive decline.
I finally emailed my
brother to report my observations to him.
My mother still
drives, which is a terrible idea. She has reported getting lost,
turning onto a busy road that I feel like I’m taking my life in my
hands driving on.
I live 125 miles
from my mother. Visiting her is a 6-hour round trip. My own health
isn’t great.
I hope to convince
my mother to move closer to me so my son and I can check on her more
easily.
Abusers like this are all the same. They didn't mean it. They were tired, stressed, it just happened, you made them do it.
My aunt (RIP) was married to a horribly abusive man for 25 years. My mother has speculated that chronic head injuries may have been responsible for the dementia she developed later in life.
I have not been well. My diabetes has decided to behave in a more completely shitty fashion than it had previously done, so not only do I find myself dealing with the frustration of contending with this garbage condition, I find myself mired in self-loathing because I learned at a young age that anything shy of physical perfection was a personal failure. I will say with unflinching honesty that if it weren't for the fact that I still serve a purpose in assisting my son, I would punch my own ticket. I realize that suicide ideation is an uncomfortable subject, but please refrain from the blah blah counseling blah and blah blah medications blah rhetoric. Counseling doesn't help, and psych meds cause me to become manic and psychotic, two things that I, shockingly, don't enjoy being.
This poem describes the dead world of Zetar 6 (Zecor), a key player in the Fetch Universe. Fetch is Team Netherworld's flagship story, which was born in early November of 2014 when I was working at the retirement community where I would work for close to 11 years. The idea was born when I learned that someone who had meant a great deal to me for many years had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. This person was only 55 years old at the time of diagnosis--the same age that I am now.
In my shock and grief, I walked through the vast retirement community and was prompted with the idea of finally starting a project that I had envisioned taking on for close to forty years. I had always wanted to write a backstory for the Lights of Zetar, a Star Trek episode which has been universally panned by critics and which has its problems, but has, nonetheless, always fascinated (and scared the bejeezus out of ) me.
The inspiration to finally begin this project and to incorporate it with my beloved Cthulhu Mythos came from a mind other than my own. I will not go into detail except to say that this inspirational individual was noncorporeal, and you can think whatever the hell you want about that, I'm not going to argue with you. I refer to this presence as Gem, and I am deeply grateful to him for the gift he gave me. I am saddened by the fact that when I am gone, the door to this world will close. No-one enjoys my work, and I am well aware of that. My writing style is entirely unappealing to most people, and my personality even more so.
I love you, Gem, but sometimes I am not sure if you possess much in the way of good sense. If you did, you surely would have chosen a scribe who was less of a complete and utter train wreck of a human being to be your co-conspirator.
If you're the sort of person whose brain resembles a busy and chaotic train station, bus terminal, or that pole in the picture, you know what I mean. It could be ADD/ADHD. It could be OCD. It could be bipolar disorder. Or, if you're like me, you have all three. Well, my friend, then you are really fucked. But, hey, I sympathize.
If you're this sort of person and you decide to be a godforsaken fool (like I am) and put yourself out there even though you know you're opening yourself up for criticism and misunderstanding by the metric fuckton, you know damn good and well that you can't win. So, either you hide your light under the proverbial bushel (I'm not sure what it's a bushel of, but it has light hiding under it) or you throw down and let the world see a level of coolness that they cannot possibly understand.
And then the criticisms start rolling in.
If you're like me and have lots of blogs because it's super-important to the OCD part of your synaptic mess to CATEGORIZE THE UNHOLY FUCK OUTTA EVERYTHING, you'll get people chiding you that you should put everything on one blog.
In a word, fuck no. Yah, that's two words. Fuck is a frequently used emphasis word around these parts. The main word is "no," covered in a big scoop of "fuck."
Anyway...
If you do decide to put everything into one blog (I have a couple of catch-all blogs so I can see what this would look like) then you have people bitching that they can't understand what your blog is even about because their god forbid that everything isn't neatly categorized just the way they like it.
To these people, I say:
Do you have to live inside my head? No? Well, lucky you. I do. Sometimes that little task is really tough, so I try to make the most of it. Creating crazy shit is a way to relieve some of that pressure. The other way would be blowing the top of my skull off with a shotgun to let all the marauding thoughts out. I know you'd probably like that, but since they ain't found a way to force my hand yet, I've decided against that plan for now. Who knows, in the future, you may get your wish.
I would also like to ask if these people are paying my salary. If you paid me to design a blog or website for you and it was a spiderweb of chaos, then you have every reason on Earth to be mad and refuse to pay me. If I didn't come to you asking for payment, then you don't have any cause to be telling me to change my evil ways. I'm not forcing you to read my blog(s).
A lot of the time, people who are really quick to harshly criticize or ridicule people who do things in a way contrary to what they themselves would do are the same people who say: "oh, I would never make fun of or hurt a person with autism, learning disabilities, neurological dysfunctions, or psychological issues." However, these people think it's funny to make fun of "weirdos" who are "acting weird", or they think it's acceptable to talk down to us and treat us as if we are sub-human and lacking in basic intelligence.
Here's a two-pronged contradictory fact. This is my very own Green Manalishi With the Two-Pronged Crown.
I like interacting with creative spirits.
I hate networking.
The trouble is, I tend to naively believe that all creative people are weirdos like me, but a lot of them are normals who don't get weirdos like me one single bit and would like to squash us out of existence or force us to fit into the 'normal' mode, squeezing the souls right out of us with derision and pharmaceuticals.
Networking bumps me up against a fair number of these people. I fucking hate networking. Loathe it. Despise it. I would love to kick networking to the curb, but if I want to get the word about the services I offer out there, I have to keep doing it.
I've been thinking about the guy in the following photo a fair bit recently. Probably because I've been conducting seances to ask him to impart to me a portion of his mechanical abilities. He could fix just about anything. I'm a numb-nuts living in a very old house with a bunch of ramshackle appliances, and I have all the mechanical aptitude of an earthworm.
So far, I haven't come up with the right offering of food and incense to invoke him. Or maybe the lighting is wrong. Probably both.
You can decide for yourself if I'm serious or not. One thing I do have in common with him is enjoying fucking with prats lacking a sense of humor.
Another thing I have in common with him is crippling shyness combined with a tendency to lash out if I feel like I'm being attacked. I managed to avoid the addiction to alcohol. How, I'm not sure, because I was a very heavy drinker when I was younger and there is a strong tendency for addiction in my family. We had depression in common, though. Now, if only I could symbiotically pick up on the mechanical aptitude--my man, let's talk! I've been having problems with my washer recently. Could you, like, come and possess my hands for an hour or two?
I'm revealing a bit more of my very weird sense of humor than I've allowed myself to do in a while. People don't get my sense of humor, and I get tired of trying to explain myself. So, you know, I hide my light under a bushel. In my case, it's probably a bushel of unwashed laundry.
My brother used to get my sense of humor. When we woke up on Saturday mornings before our favorite cartoons came on, we'd sit around making up dumb stories for an hour or two. I miss the friendship that I had with my brother before life beat that weird whimsy out of us. I kept writing stories because it's a thread that keeps me in the world, but sometimes I'd just like to let go and fall into the darkness.
I need to figure out a way to switch more in the direction of proofreading than book reviews. Authors don't tend to hate proofreaders. They tend to see proofreaders as helpful. Book reviewers are generally seen as assholes who want to destroy what the author has built. Despite the fact that I appear to be extremely prickly and hard-headed, I really don't like having people hate me.
I guess that's about all for this party. That was fun, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. Don't forget to thank the Green Manalishi before you split.
Some sundowns rise on another day of loss and one day set forever on a self ravaged by a broken mind.
~Cie~
Note:
Sundowning is a term for confusion in a dementia patient which worsens as evening comes on. Towards the end of his life, my father, who had vascular dementia, was sundowning. He confused reality with events on television.
My father was a college professor. I have cared for more than one college professor or other people whose work revolved around using their mind who ended up with dementia. The junk science sharticles which proclaim that exercising your mind helps prevent dementia make me see liquid murder.
You know what helps prevent dementia? Not having the DNA trigger for dementia coded in your genetic makeup. You could watch nothing but reruns of Jersey Shore and the Flavor of Love for your entire life and not end up with dementia if the trigger for dementia isn't in your DNA. I don't recommend it, but you could.
Dementia is horrible. It destroys lives. The least we could do is not insult those suffering from dementia and their caregivers and loved ones by publishing victim-blaming crap.
Image created by The Real Cie
Copyright taysuffocation @deviantart.com
I'm hoping one day to get this tattooed on my arm in honor of my father
Other than substance addiction issues, one might not think that Bon Scott and Amy Winehouse have much in common. However, both of them were involved to the point of obsession with people who were incredibly bad for them, and although musically speaking they are both artists I can't get enough of, I have to stop listening after a fairly brief period of time because I know what and who they're singing about and it's really depressing.
The other issue is the fact that I can relate all too well to being obsessed with a person who is really, really, really horrible for you. I did it more than once. People think that all-consuming "love" is wonderful. It's anything but, and usually, it isn't really love, it's an obsession. So, yanno, no thanks to ending up in the ER with bloody wrists over some asshole who doesn't deserve my pain. Better to be alone than to be with someone toxic.
Although, unfortunately, in my case, more often than not, I'm alone in bad company.
Plus, in the case of AC/DC, I can only listen for just so long (and that isn't long these days) before I start getting really pissed off about the way Malcolm Young went out. Dementia is the absolute fucking worst, particularly when it takes out someone whose intelligence was a key part of who they were. Malcolm Young was a high school dropout, but he was smarter than a lot of people with strings of letters behind their names.
The late Glen Campbell's wife said of dementia "It's better to die some other way," and she's absolutely right. Fuck dementia.
As Bob Seger once said, sometimes I wish I didn't know now what I didn't know then.
Here are some questions I've answered for Share Your World. You can read them if you want. Or not, if you don't want. No skin off my nose either way.
What is the best pick me up that you know of? To shake you out of the blues?
The Blue Garage
Photoshop Image by The Real Cie
How about the blues? The blues is a goddamn art form! That shitty way I feel when my soul starts crashing in on itself and I feel like I'm lying dead at the bottom of a scummy trench? I think that shit should be called "the gray-green death bile from hell." But that's too long to say readily.
Here is a poem which Pepper, the main female protagonist in Team Netherworld's long-running WIP, Fetch, wrote for her beloved Gerry, the Fetch referred to in the story's title. I think it's kind of a poem about having the blues for the blues.
Where do you like to go when you eat out?
Somewhere cheap where the food tastes good and I'll be served quickly.
Do you believe in luck? Gratitude Question: Aside from necessities, what is one thing you couldn’t go a day without? My son
Notes:
I referenced my own work in this post, which for some reason makes me see the need to mention that I plan to participate in NaPoWriMo in April as I've done every year for the past several years. I'm also planning to participate in Camp NaNoWriMo. I might try to participate in the A to Z blogging challenge if it doesn't turn out to be too muckin' fuch. I haven't decided yet if my participation will be official or unofficial.
Every time I see some fucking sharticle postulating how a person can prevent dementia by “exercising their brain,” I want to reach through the computer and punch the living fuck out of whatever fuckwit is wasting people’s time with this shit.
I took care of the elderly, including a large number of them who had dementia, for approximately 25 years. The facility I worked in for 11 years was near a university, and many of the people who ended up there had been COLLEGE PROFESSORS. One of them wrote a book about her experiences as a feminist and activist. Every day when I’d go in to help her get dressed, she would say to me: “I feel stupid.” I always told her that she wasn’t stupid at all, she had an illness that was making her confused. It was heartbreaking.
My father was a college professor. He had vascular dementia rather than a disease such as Alzheimer’s or Lewy Body Dementia, but, nonetheless, all his years of studying and teaching did not prevent him from getting dementia.
A couple of the more unique pieces postulated that a) smelling methane can help stave off dementia, and b) smelling wine can help stave off dementia. So, I figure if I eat a lot of beans, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, and cauliflower and wash it down with a glass of wine, I ought to be protected from dementia. Also from having people come anywhere within 1000 feet of me.
In recent years, several very talented musicians have succumbed to dementia.
Graphic created by The Real Cie. You are welcome to share it, but please do not erase my signature.
Glen Campbell not only wrote iconic songs, but he also had his own television show. Even after dementia had started severely affecting him, his intelligence and fighting spirit shone through. “I’ll Be Me”, the film documentary about his last tour reveals not only his struggle with Alzheimer’s but his strength of character. If anyone should have been able to avoid dementia by using his brain, Glen Campbell would be right up there.
David Cassidy was far more intelligent and insightful than people tended to give him credit for. His sometimes erratic behavior was due to feeling like he didn’t really fit in and that he wasn’t being heard. It is sad to know that he seems to have felt that his life was a series of mistakes. If anything, this very bright man used his mind perhaps too much.
Malcolm Young was not only musically talented, but he was also mechanically inclined. He worked as a machinist when he was in his teens. He enjoyed renovating things. The reason his band became an entirely different entity even though he was replaced by a relative (his nephew) who had learned some of his styles from the original is that Malcolm took his guitars apart and rearranged the components so they sounded like he wanted them to. This hardly sounds like someone who was sitting there letting his brain idle. If anything, Malcolm seems to have overthought things.
Dementia in its various forms tends to be genetic. Working puzzles may make a person faster at solving problems. It won’t stave off dementia if the trigger for dementia is activated in a person’s DNA.
I’ve lost several people in my own life to dementia. Junk “science” proclaiming that dementia can be prevented by “using your brain” really grinds my gears when people whose livelihood depends on “using your brain” succumb to the disease too.
It’s hard to think of instances where being a teen idol
helped a performer without harming them in some way. I can think of far more
instances where “teen idol” status was destructive and, in some cases, deadly
for those upon whom it was bestowed.
It is the nature of young people to be hopeful and eager to
please. These qualities render them easily victimized by unscrupulous
individuals who, in fact, care nothing about their well-being.
People who were child stars and/or teen idols either depart
show business entirely once their heyday is over, or they spiral down. It is
unfortunate that the public tends to laugh at the misfortune of these fallen
stars rather than to feel sympathy for them. Schadenfraude is ugly.
Off the top of my head, I can think of a couple people who
came away from child or teen stardom unscathed. The first is Shirley Temple.
She left show business.
The second is Shaun Cassidy. Shaun saw what the star-maker
machine did to his older brother David, and he didn’t take his own teen idol
status terribly seriously. In one interview, he revealed that he always
preferred being behind the camera to being in front of it. Shaun’s sensible
approach as well as support and guidance from David and his mother, Shirley
Jones, helped ensure that he came through the teen idol experience unscathed.
Unlike Shaun, David’s life was troubled. He never enjoyed
the pretty boy pop star persona created by his management team. Backstage, he
would often play songs like “Voodoo Child.” He was interested in performing
harder rock music, but, thanks to his teen idol status, he was never taken
seriously as a musician. Throughout his life, David struggled with addiction
and had trouble maintaining relationships.
“The Two Coreys” are another example of the destructive
nature of the way child and teen stars are treated. Corey Feldman is alive, but
he is hardly unscathed. He realizes that he is the butt of jokes. He has stated
that he doesn’t consider the assaults he endured (groping and lewd suggestions)
to be as severe as those endured by his late friend, Corey Haim, who was raped.
Corey Feldman is a sweet if somewhat eccentric personality. It
would be shameful to ridicule him in any case, but, considering the abuses and
losses he’s endured, it is doubly so.
Brittney Spears is thriving at this point in her life, but that
wasn’t always the case. Exploited at a young age, the pressure to maintain a “sexy”
persona and flawless physique eventually caused her to have a psychological
breakdown. Fortunately, Brittney received positive support and is doing well. I
applaud her for publishing the unretouched photos from the Candies shoe campaign
she modeled for. I’m glad she’s still here.
When I see someone like Justin Bieber acting out, I may feel
on one hand that he’s making himself look foolish, but, on the other hand, I
understand why he is behaving as he is. A lot of pressure is put on people like
Justin to be the image that was created for them. People want Justin Bieber to continue
to be the cute, mop-topped teenager that he was when he was discovered, even
though he is now in his mid-twenties.
It is one thing to expect people to behave civilly. It is
another to ridicule people, set them up for failure, and then expect them to
behave normally. Someone like Justin Bieber hasn’t had a normal existence in a
long time.
As the late Carrie Fisher said, youth and beauty are not
accomplishments, they are accidents of time and DNA. It is high time that society
ceased behaving as if youth and beauty are the highest of accomplishments.
Beauty is subjective, and youth always fades, unless a life ends prematurely.
We need to be kinder to one another as a whole, and we need
to stop perpetuating the attitude of exploiting and burning out teen and child
performers.
I'm real and raw, I'm irreverent, I have tattoos, and I tend to liberally sprinkle my conversation with profanity. Don't like, don't read and then complain. Should you do so, I will have to assume that you are the kind of person who is too stupid to avoid walking into a pit which has glaring neon signs and a barrier fence around it.
List 2 things you have to be happy about?
I'm happy that my son is part of my life. I wish that other members of the family would accept him as he is. He is high-functioning autistic and just talking to him you wouldn't know he's any different from people who are neurologically "normal." My mother insists that he isn't actually autistic because he doesn't have any extreme behaviors and his intelligence is higher than average. She thinks he should be able to just go out and get a job. He's never been able to hold a job because he becomes overwhelmed and then gets depressed. I get tired of arguing with her about it. I hope someday he finds a job he can do, because I think it will give him a sense of accomplishment. However, I don't think he's any less worthy because he hasn't yet.
I guess I'm happy that I have a job, even if the pay isn't great. I have a lot of health issues. My job allows me to make my own schedule and doesn't require punching a time clock or working a certain number of hours. However, the pay is extremely variable (I deliver food and pay depends on tips and number of orders run.) I say I guess I'm happy about it because a lot of the time I don't want to work at all. Call me lazy if you want. I refuse to call myself that anymore. That word has given me such a complex that I feel guilty about resting, ever.
Have you ever owned a rock, pet rock, or gem that is not jewelry?
I'm kind of a huge fucking dork, and I love plays on words. See if you can spot the "rock" in the image I shared. He isn't jewelry, but he is a gem. I gave him some jewelry in the form of a copper bracelet for protection from unwanted energies. I don't think he'd much care to be referred to as a pet.
Are you a hugger or a non-hugger?
I really don't like to be touched. I did hug my statuette before I put him back in the display case, where he watches over the ashes of two of my best friends: my beloved cats, Lafayette and Trinity.
Lafayette died on his sixth birthday, and I will never get over losing him. He was very special. He was a small cat but always a big kitten. He lived in the shelter from the time he was a month old until I adopted him when he was eight months old. He had quite a few health problems which all seemed to be minor. He was from a feral colony, and, I imagine, he was probably quite inbred, but that didn't matter to me. He died from kidney failure. I've always wondered if I'd gotten him to the vet sooner if I could have had him for longer.
Whenever I show my tattoos, I so often get the kind of person who feels the need to comment that they don't like tattoos. I don't care if you don't like tattoos. Don't like them, don't get them. There's no need to be snotty about someone else's choice, particularly when the tattoo has personal meaning for them.
I've never had the money to get a tattoo honoring Trinity, but here is a picture of her. She died at age 10 from brain and lung cancer.
What inspired you or what did you appreciate this past week? Feel free to use a quote, a photo, a story, or even a combination.
I have been having trouble being inspired to write at all, which is why I've resorted to puking out personal crap that nobody wants to hear about. Oh, hell, let's be honest, nobody wants to read my stupid stories either. I wish I could go back to wanting to write them anyway.
All the lights have died somehow, or were they ever there?
Night of the Long Grass by The Troggs Released 1967
The Cheese Grates It:
Dark Night of the Long Grass
The above has been one of my favorite songs since I first discovered it in my pre-teen years. I was somewhere between ten and twelve, I honestly don't remember exactly. As I will be 53 years old in approximately three weeks, I hope I can be forgiven for the fact that most of my childhood memories are fairly misty. I tend to remember emotions rather than exact events. The most prevalent emotion that has permeated my life is sorrow.
I seem to be constantly losing things. All of my life I have misplaced things. At this point I speak of losing people and beliefs. I will say right now that anyone reading this can check their "seek counseling and meds" trope at the door. I've tried both at various times in my life and neither works. So, let us allow ourselves to speak in terms of emotion rather than things strictly physical. I've found that approaching matters from a strictly physical viewpoint has never worked for me in any case.
One of the prompts I'm working with asks me to state one of my strongest beliefs and then disprove it. I'm not going to do that. That strategy is for those who delight in playing devil's advocate. I've never been that sort of person. In any case, believe it or not, I have no strong beliefs. I don't believe in much of anything anymore. The world has torn away all of my beliefs from me. Some will say this is a good thing. To them I will say "fuck you," as I am tired of hurting.
I don't follow any sort of religion. I don't need dogma or the promise of an eternal heaven, which, from what I can gather, is rather like an eternity on a constant winning streak in Vegas, to convince me to try and be a good person. I've never been to Vegas during my lifetime, and I can do without going there in the Afterlife. I also don't need the threat of an overbearing deity sending me to hell to convince me not to do awful things to others. I don't do awful things because it's wrong to cause harm, not because I fear the wrath of a celestial patriarch who will cause me to suffer for eternity.
The God that I learned of in my youth, when I was, by the way, a very devout Catholic who truly believed in Him, came to seem to me to be an abusive megalomaniac of a parent. For those with different perceptions, it is not my intent to attack your devotion or convince you to stop believing. This is my perception.
I initially lost my religion in my late teens and could never go back to it. It does not ring true for me anymore.
I discovered Wicca and New Age ideals when I was in my late teens. I lost my religion again in my late forties, having discovered time and again that much of the New Age thinking is rife with victim-blaming and My Way or the Highway thinking, just like the religion I left behind in my late teens. Although some of the mystical practices that I did as a solitary practitioner brought me a degree of solace, I was too hurt by those I had interacted with in an attempt to find camaraderie to continue them.
I am not an atheist, if for no other reason than the fact that the idea of the here and now being the be all and end all is simply too fucking depressing for me to abide it. I continue to at least believe in the possibility of spirits, angels, other dimensions, an afterlife, because it brings me a grain of solace to do so, and I'm not going to try and disprove it, simply because it can be neither proven nor disproven given modern scientific methods and tools. If you wish to read theories disproving the existence of these things, there are a plethora of atheist writings devoted to doing just that. No, I am not going to point you in the direction of such works. Google is your friend. I am merely a remote person ranting in the dungeon of my own sorrowful hell and finding no solace.
I lost a lot last year, including my occupational identity. I had been a nurse for close to two years and had been a caregiver for close to twenty-five. My own health was deteriorating, and I was fired because I fell into a deep sleep while working a night shift. I had seen the warning signs. I was dozing off more often during the night. I knew that my diabetes was getting worse, but I was trying to pull together the time and money to go to the doctor. I worked myself into the ground because people needed me.
The other nurse on the case was sick. I was sick too, but I had contracted the illness from the patient I worked with three days a week, so the case coordinator felt that I could keep working with him because I couldn't re-infect him.
I fell into an extremely deep sleep which I don't remember falling into. I woke up to see the patient's father sitting on the side of the bed, glowering at me. I collected my belongings, apologized profusely, and left. The family embellished the tale, stating that I was ordered to leave. I was not. In fact, the father told me I could finish the shift. I told him that I felt it would be better if I left, and that I would remove myself from the case.
When I was called into the office, my coordinator said that I had always done good work for the company and that he would give me a positive recommendation to any potential employers who called, but would have to tell them that I wasn't eligible for rehire. I was polite and brief, thanked him, and left without making a scene.
I worked with another patient through another company until that patient became severely ill and had to be hospitalized. The company didn't get me another case. I ended up delivering food via Uber Eats. I tried driving passengers through Lyft and Uber. Some dumb stoner kid backed into the rental car I was driving, and that was that. The company I'd rented the car through didn't credit me for the unused days. I was out a thousand dollars.
I tried going back into working in a long term care setting, and ended up nearly passing out. I tried working for yet another homecare agency, but found that I could no longer do the extremely physical portion of the work. I left nursing entirely.
For a time, I worked for a grocery delivery service. However, the service was poorly run. Often I would be sent out with a bag full of ten deliveries, and I would come to find out that I was making the delivery several hours after it had been placed. The company never called the customer to advise them that the delivery would be so late. Often there would be one manager on while the other managers acted as drivers. I ended up with severe nerve impingement in my left arm and a badly inflamed lateral epicondyle, which left me unable to sit up for long periods of time because the pain was so intense. At this point the pain is gone, but the numbness and tingling in my left hand remains. It may never resolve.
While I was working for this company, I would wake up screaming every day due to horrific cramps in my calves. My tendency to sleep paralysis also worsened exponentially during this time.
I parted ways with this company after a person who had meant a lot to me from the time of my very troubled youth died far too young from early onset dementia. The man wasn't young when he died--he was sixty-four years old--but he was too young for such an awful fate. Dementia seems to me to be the Universe taking a huge shit on a person, and this man didn't deserve that. He tried to be kind. He was flawed, but he tried to be good in spite of his own predisposition to addiction and depression, and the fact that he had a bit of a temper. He didn't deserve the way he went out. His mind was his defining feature, and he was robbed of it. He didn't consider himself physically attractive or particularly charming or especially talented, but he did seem to pride himself on his innovation and determination. That he couldn't have been allowed to find comfort in those things during his last days seems like nothing but a huge slap in the face, and I hate it.
I know that there are those who have lost everything and yet manage to maintain their beliefs and avoid bitterness. I suppose I'm not as good as such people. Honestly, I've never seen much good in me. I don't like myself very much, if one is to be entirely honest, and I doubt I ever will. Still, I used to have my imagination and my wonderful world where fantastic dreams could come true. At this point I seem to be losing even that, so you'll pardon the fuck out of me if I don't feel like disproving whatever fragile bits of belief may remain.
Perhaps this is more a confession than an actual rant. In some ways, once a Catholic always a Catholic. I haven't forgotten how to confess.
If I am ever diagnosed with dementia, I will commit suicide. Anything else, I will put up a fight and let it takes me when it takes me. Dementia does not get that much respect. Fuck dementia. It destroys everything that a person is. My aunt has dementia, and she no longer communicates with words. If one speaks to her, she giggles. She wanders and is forever searching for something that she cannot put a name to. At least she is not combative and she doesn't seem particularly distressed. However, she is not herself and hasn't been for a long time. I will not become that way.
Forgive me for at least hoping that there is something better on the other side for those who have suffered. Forgive me for at least believing in the possibility of magic and an afterlife even though I quite question the interpretation of the Higher Power in which many people believe. Forgive me for being neither here nor there, for being neither a believer nor a non-believer. Or don't. What I believe or don't believe really matters to no-one but me.
