I hate my brain.
I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
Is it too much to ask for a working memory that works just
enough for me to feed myself?
Some days, all I want from my stupid, idiotic brain is to
let me get my food into the fridge. To somehow, just keep track of the fact that
this thing that I bought to eat for lunch tomorrow – and am *really* looking
forward to eating – is not yet in the fridge.
But my stupid brain is no longer satisfied with forgetting what
is in my bag (or that I even have a bag) by the time I get it from the car into
the house. Oh, no. It’s now graduated on to letting me forget what’s in it as
I unpack it. I successfully get to the fridge. I successfully unpack what I
think is everything in the bag. I look at that bag over and over again that
night and the next morning and think, “No, I actually remembered – I successfully
put my cold stuff in the fridge. I’m sure of it.”
But NO! The thing I most wanted to eat is, in fact, still in
the bag. I somehow looked directly at it while taking out the item next to it,
and managed to forget it was there. It can be over a day before, I discover it –
still in the bag and completely ruined.
And yes, if I just tidied the bag away after I unpacked it,
I probably wouldn’t have this problem. Instead I’d have the other problem – the
one where I put the item on the bench in my direct line of sight and forget it
exists. Or where I find the bag a week later and realise there’s still
something in it, even though I swore it was empty when I packed it away.
And this crap just keeps happening. Over and over and over
again. All these quirky, “oh, ho ho, Sharon has such a silly memory” stories
are funny, until you actually are Sharon and you can’t rely on your
brain to let you function.
I can’t rely on my memory. I can’t rely on my perception. I
can’t rely on my ability to look in a bag and see what’s there, or look at
something I’ve forgotten and remember that I’ve forgotten it. Such a simple
thing – to look at something and say “oh, yeah, I needed to do something with
that” – that’s all I want, and I don’t have it.
I can’t rely on my brain. For anything. And that’s not funny
so much as alarming. I live in constant fear that I’ve forgotten something
important (like locking my door or turning something flammable off), and I’m
completely incapable of saying “Oh, no, now that I’m thinking about it, I do
have a reliable recollection of doing XYZ.” Because I could very well remember
doing XYZ, but that doesn’t mean I actually did it.
God, I hate my brain.
