Do you recognise me?
Do you know who I am?
This feeling of amnesia. I remember the old me. The business woman. The unstoppable force that could turn her hand to anything.
Rotting lean-to? I rebuilt that in a week.
Leaking toilet? I refitted the whole washroom over a weekend.
A wasteland turned into a beautiful garden. That was me too.
And then my body broke.
It took a long time to adjust. The pattern of overdoing it, then suffering in pain and frustration. Oh that pain. It made me want to scream each time it hit. But my mind was always there. The desire to come back fighting. I was never down for long. I still had the power to reinvent myself.
But then this depression arrived.
And now I’m lost. The very essence of who I was has escaped me and I don’t know how to get back.
The fight.
The drive.
It’s slowly began to evaporate.
And then a job that I loved, kicked me whilst I was down. Made me feel incapable. Made me feel worthless. And became the final straw.
I feel very betrayed.
All the talk of supportive, of being a team. All a lie when you didn’t conform. It was out of my capability. A little kindness and flexibility and I would have defeated this. I’d have come back fighting again. But they destroyed the very essence of who I was.
And I feel I’ve lost the war. Each battle I’d previously conquered is obsolete.
I spend my day staring at my phone, endless scrolling at nothing. Watching mindless TV that’s forgotten the second the screen changes to the next image.
I know why I sit here. I’m searching. I’m looking for who I’ll be next, wanting a way to reinvent myself again.
And occasionally I see something in the distance. I reach out to grasp it. Like wisps of cloud, it disappears in my hand.
Is this what dementia is like? Remembering the old me, but not recognising this shell. This husk.
And I can’t see a way of coming back from this. Because I no longer know who I am.
I’m broken