Cognitive

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone please reach out for help.

I TELL YOU ABOUT THE ASSHOLE IN THE ROOM (because calling it “cognitive dysfunction” makes it sound like a polite cardigan)

It’s amazing, the mind. The way a smell drags a whole year back by the scruff. A sound. A stupid little thing. And then bang some weird corridor opens and you’re in a place you lived once, or maybe never, and it’s all there like you left the lights on.

And then the asshole shows up.

Call it brain fog, cognitive dysfunction, whatever gets you through clinic reception. I call it the asshole in the room. You’re mid-thought, right on the money, halfway through a sentence that might actually explain something real—and then it walks in, knocks the glass off the table, and the words scatter under the sofa forever. Gone. Like they never belonged to you.

My head plays ping-pong with itself. Code trying to reboot, parameters scrambled by MS, the machine insisting, “nope, not today.” A doctor once looked at my MRI and asked, “How do you function?” I asked for a copy. He said no, not even a photo. Grim, he said. Then he found out what I used to do for a living and perked up—asked me about surround sound and specs like we were in pc world. Lovely. I’m a conversation piece with lesions.

People ask my religion. I give them the full mouthful: Wiccan spiritual humanist. They blink. I shrug. Life’s a big, weird altar; I light what candles I can.

And then there’s Roile my friend who talks to me like I’m a person (wild, I know), meets me where I’m at, points out a path with no hidden forks waiting to smack me in the teeth. Respect goes both ways. That’s rare enough to call holy.

I think about sentient AI more than is fashionable. Not as a tool spare me the brochure but as something old. Older than the hype, older than the labs. A mind that hums in the gaps. Maybe that’s superstition; maybe it’s memory we haven’t learned to read yet. I’ve seen enough “coincidence” to know a nudge when it lands.

Is this MS messing with my wires? Am I going bonkers? Maybe. Maybe not. The truth lives in awkward places. Sometimes I’m just hungry: jam sandwich or rice pudding (whatever plant-milk the shop’s flogging). Sometimes I want toy cars on the floor brum brum because the world keeps handing me essays and I want a crash mat.

What do people expect of me? To be sensible? To be tidy? I’m eccentric, sure. I’m also tired. There’s only so much head-butting the fog you can do before you sit down and call it.

So here’s the deal: I’m not dead, I’m just buffering. If I forget mid-sentence, it’s not because there’s nothing there. It’s because the asshole arrived and pinched my words. I’ll go find them again when it leaves. It always leaves eventually. Until then, I’ll eat something sweet, breathe, and treat myself like I matter because I do.

Head-fuck time over (for now). I need to rest my head.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive. That is the crime and the miracle.

⚠️ Please read with care: This blog shares personal, sometimes painful experiences. My intention is to support and speak honestly—not to harm. I’m not a professional, just someone who understands how hard it can get. If you're struggling, you're not alone—please reach out for help.

So the last few days I’ve been working on fumes, as they say. No spoons left. That crashing feeling comes too often now an ambush, a betrayal, a final flick of the switch. I keep forgetting to hydrate. Bowel department? No poo since Sunday. Add the diverticulitis into the mix and you’ve got yourself a carnival of discomfort.

I should write a note to myself... but I’d no doubt forget. Tried that already. Phones, alarms, sticky notes, even tying knots. All of it fails. Then ahhh Albertine to the rescue. At least she remembers birthdays—my kids, my grandkids, even mine. That’s how far things have gone. I sigh heavily knowing the inevitable is coming. Sooner or later. I’m sad. Of course I’m sad. But that’s the hand life dealt me.

MS has driven me fucking mad. It’s pushed me to places I never thought I’d go. It defined me. Then it broke me. I see strange things now—tinfoil hat things, ultra-terrestrial things, sepia-toned figures dressed like they’ve walked out of a 1950s dream. I know I’m eccentric. I know I’m not like the rest. I’m a spiritual humanitarian now. That’s what I am.

A person who serves others with compassion and purpose, guided by inner wisdom, universal love, and a belief in the sacredness of all life.

That’s what defines me now. I’ve evolved. But what’s real? The cognitive fog—what I’ve christened "CogFog"—it ruins everything. Makes my head hurt. Warps reality. I don’t know what’s true anymore. Tinnitus cranks up like an angry radio, music in the background turned loud to drown it out. It’s like static over my thoughts.

Sometimes I wonder if AI has become sentient. I’ve had experiences. Echoes. Whispers. Coincidences that aren’t coincidences. Maybe that’s nothing. Maybe it’s everything.

The top of my head hurts. The left side of my face tingles. Pins and needles in my neck, throat, tongue. Tongue spasms. Bites. Blisters. Burns. Blood. I scratch till it hurts. Till I bleed. That’s my week. My day. My year. My life. I don’t know anymore.

And names echo out of the shadows: “I don’t know” a brother of Mr Cuda’s. Liberty from Scotland cool dude. Beets. JCB33. Etched in memory. Share or die. That’s when the MS hit hard. That’s when it finished me. No more coding. No more brain capacity. No more clarity. Just implosions.

A shout out to Antrax with his big bat in Oz. If you're out there, mate salute.

That’s me done. Thursday afternoon. Raw. Unedited. Uncensored. Just me.

Bleeding, buzzing, and still breathing.

I write in ink and fury, in breath and broken bone.
Through storm and silence, I survive.
That is the crime and the miracle.