I Am So Smart...SMRT

I’m starting to realize more and more the most upsetting thing about my illness is not the pain, or the weird walking, or being limited how much I can work or even having to get a ride everywhere I go. The most upsetting thing for me is remembering what my mind once was, and comparing it to what it is now.

For some reason when writing I seem to be able to get my point across okay, and what I want to say comes out pretty easy…most of the time. However in verbal conversations, no matter how short or long, how deep or simple minded I find myself having so much more difficulty.

Explaining myself to others is sometimes pointless, trying to remember the names of certain things or spitting out a phrase when I need it has become like I have a mind stutter.

I either have a hard time getting it from my brain to my mouth or I have a hard time finding the correct verbiage all together.

Then there’s the intellectual side of things. This past week I had to do more Work Ability testing to see if my mind and body are ready to go back to work and school permanently. To think that I was once considered a genius makes me sick. I look at the patterns and puzzles and remember my old IQ testing and how simple it was for me to blaze through them with ease. Now I stumble through everything from the puzzles, to the fractions, to the memory testing, to the problem solving.

I have hope though, I know that if I continue writing and reading while I use Kahn Academy, it I’ll slowly rehabilitate to what I was.

They say the slices of Einstein’s brain they preserved showed neurons and pathways that were as healthy as a twenty year olds even though he was in his 70’s when he died. They think it was because of his constant “mind experiments.”

I’ll get there. I have to, it’s my Everest. My faith, my intellect, and my optimism and my quirky personality is what makes me, me. If I don’t find that girl again, I don’t know if I’ll be able to completely accept who I am.

Which sounds stupid, I know. I might as well be a twelve year old girl saying I’m not good enough because my eyebrows are plucked perfectly. But understanding the world only through feeling leaves you unguarded. Although intellect is by far the lesser of the two you must have both to truly understand this world and the life ahead.