(no subject)

[the_rck]

I tried to explain the feeling of losing my thoughts to Scott and to the medical folks Monday night. They didn't get it, but my sister did when I told her yesterday morning. It's as if I'm losing myself in layers. I picture it as hollowing from the inside out with the most important things as the outermost layers. I think that having the important things at the outer edge is the part that confuses other people.

I know the last three layers--

One is the ability to string together words in my head to create story/narrative and to converse in casual settings. This goes first.

The next, further out, is my face to face social interface (phone calls go away earlier) for strangers which is a self defense thing. Being fat, 51, female, and disabled, this is a huge thing because I need things from people who are prone to looking at me and dismissing me. This is both the ability to be assertive and the ability to be friendly-- cab drivers, staff at the grocery store, nurses, Cordelia's teachers, people like that.

The last and outermost is taking care of Cordelia. Yesterday, I could tell a difference between my thinking and mannerisms with regard to anything having to do with her. Last night was her first driver's ed class, and I checked the paperwork, made sure it was all there and filled out and that she and Scott left (me in the waiting room at the ER) at the right time. I could do that when I couldn't assign a number to my pain because the 0-10 pain scale doesn't parse well for me.

I think I view this as a deterioration from the inside out because the stuff I keep longest has to do with interfacing with things outside my head.

Comments

[evalerie]

Wow. "Fat, 51, female, and disabled" is *so* not how I think of you. "Friend" and "nice person" and a long list of much more positive attributes such as "writes neat role playing games" and "open minded about people's cultural differences" are what comes to mind. I know that I am going in a different direction than the point that you were trying to make, and you were talking about first impressions on new people. But that description of yourself just sounded so different from how I think of you that I had to say something.

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I think when most people think of losing capabilities, they think of the fluffy, outer, less-important stuff going away first, and the most central core of a person's self being on the inside and lasting the longest. I see where your description is coming from, and I also see why your description doesn't fit together with other people's model looks like.

[the_rck]

I think that the things I hold the longest are the things that are most likely to carry me through to a point where I can get the other bits back.

Well, and Cordelia is more important to me than any of the rest of it.

[lunabee34]

Hugs

[the_rck]

Thanks.