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There is something about this day I am supposed to remember but I just can’t remember what it is. It keeps nagging right at the edge of my mind. The joys of midlife memory. Wonder if this eventually goes away once I am on the other side of menopause or will it always be like this?
I used to have a near photographic memory. In school, I could read something once and know it. Not just for a test the next day, but know it the next year and the one after that. I’ve always pictured my brain like a room full of file cabinets with a little man running around locating every file I needed in seconds. Now that room looks like a cyclone hit it. Papers are strewn everywhere, piled up in corners, hanging out of drawers, and fluttering through the air as the little man completely exhausted tries in vain to locate the information. He is running around pulling on drawers that are rusted shut, searching through piles, tossing papers in the air making more of a mess. Finally exhausted he gives up and sits down in his wooden office chair, rests his head on his blotter next to his bankers lamp and takes a nap. This is my perimenopause brain.
I can remember random trivia like how often a sloth poops but don’t ask me to figure out how many square feet of carpet I need. I have forgotten all but the most rudimentary of mathematics and I have now forgotten where I was going with this conversation as my daughter has walked in and totally derailed my train of thought. Hmmm.. Oh well, like time my thoughts are fleeting. It does become frustrating. I used to be able to write in a house full of screaming children with multiple TV’s and radios playing, now even the sound of music while I’m writing distracts my mind and makes it impossible to concentrate.
Sometimes I am fearful that I am developing Alzheimer’s, but I read somewhere that as long as its just nouns I am forgetting then it is not Alzheimer’s. Either way it is frightening to think that one day it could all be gone and I would be lost and alone inside my own mind. No one in my family has ever had Alzheimer’s as far as I know.
They say that learning something new everyday keeps the mind sharp and wards off Dementia. I would like to agree but my great uncle ended up with Dementia. He was one of the smartest people I know. He had several degrees, was an educator, historian, genealogist, professor,and writer. I know that with all that intelligence it must have been hard to deal with the loss of his memory.
I have always prided myself on my intelligence and my memory. I was not just the cute girl, I was the smart girl too. Now I don’t feel like the smart girl and with this aging body I am far from the cute girl I used to be. They say looks will fade but you will always have your education unless of course your file cabinet gets stuck, your little man is exhausted, and the only files you can grasp out of all the mess is the fact that a sloth only poops once a week.
Never worry about what “disease” you might get, before you actually get it. It is a waste of time. You could be taken out by a city bus or a train this very day–at least, I could! Eat, drink, and be merry! I will leave out the rest of that quote! Thanks for the follow. Hope I don’t disappoint.
There is a wonderful book by Daniel Schacter, former chair of Harvard’s Psychology Department and a well known memory researcher, called The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. We know our memory deteriorates as we age, but there are many aspects of memory that are simply not as clear or as accurate as we think they are, even when we are young. In short, it’s not necessarily the big “A” – whether you have it in your family, as I do, or not. 😉
Thank you. I will check out the book you recommended.
I really enjoyed reading your description of your brain. …Memory is an odd thing, and so unique to each person. I can recall exactly where a particular word is located inside a given book, but not what I did two days ago– I’d need a moment to think that one over. It’s a strange thing. And then there’s the concept of forgetting… I’ve heard that we often forget “the small stuff” so that we can make room for new or more important things— I found this somewhat reassuring. 🙂