I don’t write much about the dark times these days. It isn’t because they’ve gone away, it’s more that writing about it feels old and tired and far too self-pitying. I know I’ve said before at some point that the strangest thing for me is that down here in the rabbit hole, I don’t really feel sad. I don’t feel much of anything at all. Everything seems so clear.
We hold these truths to be self evident… Nothing ever really changes. Certain things are true and will continue to be true. Maybe nothing we do ever really matters.
I’m sorry. I don’t want to keep playing this old refrain. But there it is, always coming back no matter what I think I’ve done to banish it, control it, change it.
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Oh and don’t feel bad on our part, it is not something you can control, sharing is actually better than vanishing. Some of us are cursed (and sometimes blessed) with stronger emotions than others, and some of us have a harder time coping with or controlling them, and some of us then retreat inside ourselves, shutting ourselves off from the world, it is our way to cope, others have other coping mechanisms, some of them far worse than ours.
Zazzy, this might be the wrong topic for my question, but for a long time I’ve been wondering about this: Have you considered writing a book about the reality of caring for a parent with Alzheimer’s? I wish you would. You have a lot of journal-type material already. With an outline to show where you’d need to fill in the blanks, you would be pretty far down the road to writing that kind of book. I’m reading one now that won’t be published in the USA for several months. Definitely not sugar-coated – but fascinating. I’ll send it to you when I finish it.
Delete if you wish. I would if I could. Sorry.
Hiya Hannah, there’s no need to worry or want to delete. This episode is passing – the way they come on suddenly and so very darkly makes me certain that they’re chemically based.
I appreciate your faith in my writing, btw, but I don’t think I will ever be that kind of writer. I’ll be interested in seeing that book.
I know it’s badly placed, though. I just didn’t intend it to be, “Hey, I know how to cure your depressions – write a book!” (but that is how it looked to me later).
I’m about halfway through the book. I wish I’d read it before Uncle Bert arrived. I might have understood what was happening sooner.
Nah, I knew where you were coming from. From where you were coming?
BTW, I’m going to make sugar cookies and take them in for Mom and our Lady Friends to decorate. I’m trying to figure out how to minimize the mess while maximizing the fun.
Thanks, Zazzy. Maybe see if they want to stick some Red Hots (hard cinnamon candies) on the cookies with a dab of icing “glue”?
Since I got this comment section off topic…
Zaz, I’m trying to find where you wrote about Alzheimers taking away personhood (although you said it better – I just can’t recall how). The book I’m reading explores in one chapter what I think may be similar questions about whether we are our memories, and what that means if memory is lost, and where is the soul, “the ghost in the machine” (is the brain the soul’s dwelling place?).
Possibly This Post.
Or might you have been thinking the poem I wrote about it?
It was just a brief comment, but maybe I’m thinking of something on Twitter.
I have finished the book and will get it in the mail to you later this week. As I neared the end, I was thinking, “Someone should make this book into a movie”… and I just learned that it is in the works!