I’m losing words.
I tell myself that it’s a part of the crazy hormonal storm of menopause, without even checking to make sure I have that fact right. It could have been true of only the beginning stages, which are definitely behind me now. And if that is the case, then these moments when I reach for a familiar word and fumble around searching for it in the dusty corners of my mind, well they would then be serious. And what would become of me?
I use words to define myself. They are my only bit of magic, my only alchemy, my music, my artifice, my mask for presenting the best me, the me I want you to see. Without them, an echoing black chamber, a scraped out pumpkin head, a grotesque figure on a bridge screaming with no sound.
In conversations, I sputter and choke. Will I learn to speak less, argue less, be less?
My nouns, my nouns, why have you forsaken me?
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I’m so relieved to read this. I do hope it is temporary menopause. I make excuses that I have so much information in my head that something has to make room for it.
But the suspense makes me think of my aunt, a journalist, whose life was words, who worked until she was 70, and within ten years had lost all her words. Yes, this is a horror story.
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I have the same issues, same fears. One thing that I was going to post about, but changed my mind, is that I remember that my mom quit emailing or IMing and she said it was because she forgot how to spell. Lately I’ve noticed my spelling is getting worse.
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