I have an incredibly detailed, high pressure job; one where I must remember many details every hour. Unfortunately, one of the first manifestations of aging for me has been memory loss. Now, I NEVER had good short term memory, essentially because I had a serious accident with carbon monoxide when I was in my twenties, and it damaged my frontal lobe to the extent that I lost the capacity for short term memory.
So I learned to play tricks with myself to compensate. I used a pile of memory tricks, and they were reasonably effective for multiple years, however those tricks aren't working so very well these days. I write down as much as I possibly can, and that is how I manage to continue to function in my job. My iPhone tells me when I have to be places and where they are. These are the "new" tricks I need to utilize to function.
Unfortunately, I simply cannot write down EVERYTHING -- and so things drop through the cracks; through the saturated sponge of my mind and just right out of my world.
I don't know how to find words to explain how utterly frustrating and difficult this is for me. I just want to shake it off and have it go away; but that's just not going to occur. I have to learn to live with it - and it is not a pleasant thing to live with. It's no more pleasant than the agonizing pain my hands feel when I wake up in the morning; the osteoarthritis that I have created from years of non stop typing, martial arts, wood splitting and snow shoveling in the mountains. Many factors create the situation I am in and there are not many alternatives to make these things go away.
So, I try to find ways to live with this; to accept this as the way things are going to be. I try hard, but sometimes it just fails and the frustration swamps me and I begin to become angry with myself. This isn't a rational reaction - and I fight it when it occurs, but it does happen.
When I'm on a stage and doing a performance, and the lyrics of a song simply just fly out of my head - I realize that it won't be long before I won't be able to be on a stage singing, unless I am willing to sing with a lyrics sheet in my hands; and I view that as so unprofessional, that it's not likely I will do that. So I will lose singing, one of my life's greatest joys.
So aging means losses. It means your friends are dying, your body is starting to fail you and, even worse, your mind begins to fail you. Some genius decided to call these the "Golden Years" and I haven't the faintest idea why. Losing your capacities, your expectations of what you can and can't do, losing your family and friends and the simple loss of your youth -- all these things are very painful and you learn that every day, you must come to grips with these losses; to accept them as inevitable and to reach far to search for positive ways to look at this and learn to come to a peaceful acceptance.
None of this would be so damned difficult if I didn't get any backlash for forgetting something. It is that refusal to understand this situation is going to be ongoing from someone that I love unconditionally that is extraordinarily painful. I cannot reconcile that position in my mind - not that I don't realize it's somewhat annoying, but in comparison to the huge pile of frustration and pain that it causes me in the first place - the backlash just bowls me over and wrecks me. So I'm currently in a heap, and operating without the necessary information to plan something - which will force me to make a solitary plan. I guess I can live with that - but I don't view it with anything remotely resembling happiness, but rather with great sadness. This is not a condition that is going to improve with time - if anything, it is going to get worse. I can write down what I can, use all my memory tricks that I am aware of - keep trying to retrain my mind to improve my memory skills - but I fear that it will continue to degrade, and along with it will be the degradation of a relationship that I value greatly.
And THAT loss, for that one, I will be inconsolable.
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