ive been thoroughly bamboozled

I am having trouble because I have cognitive impairment. Some people call it brain fog, but I think that doesn’t capture how debilitating and utterly devastating it is.

Before I got sick, I used to be a writer, a reader, a successful student, an avid debater. I used to think. A lot. You never realize how much happens in your head until suddenly everything shuts off.

Nothing happens up there anymore. It’s just dust bunnies and cotton fluff. I can’t think at all. I lose every thought as it passes through my head. Everything just slips through my fingers.

My memory is horrible. Usually I can’t remember what happened the day before. Usually I don’t remember what month it is. It hurts my heart that the memories I have logged will eventually dissolve. Everything dissolves. There is nothing tangible here.

I can’t follow the plots of the simplest books and tv shows and movies because I can’t remember and because I get confused. I spend a lot of my life confused. You never quite get used to it, but you learn to swallow the confusion.

It’s terribly isolating. So much of relationships relies on our cognitive functioning. I am lost in the world and in my brain. I get confused just trying to have basic conversations. I know it makes me boring and hard to have a conversation with. You have to be very patient with my mind to have a relationship with me.

It’s terribly isolating, but it makes you need other people. I need help holding my life together. It’s awful to be so dependent.

Cognitive impairment is just one symptom of my illnesses, but it’s one that often gets overlooked and misunderstood. People say, “You’re still who you were before you got sick.”

Not because I don’t care enough to think of something. Not because im lazy to try and think. My brain just doesn’t work, and sometimes I cant even force it to think of anything