When I was eight, or so, I started having these episodes in which I knew I wasn’t me but I didn’t know who I was and that I felt unreal and that the world felt unreal and it was scary as hell. I asked my mother if it ever happened to her and she said it hadn’t and that was the last we spoke of it. Sometimes I would mention when I had a ‘not me’ episode and then move on. These ‘not me’ things would happen maybe four or five times a week and last a second or two and they were always a bit frightening and disorienting.
As I got older I learned that these experiences were called depersonilization and derealization and once I learned what they were I thought that it meant there was something wrong with me and that it was some kind of little swiss cheese hole in my psyche that if I worked hard enough I could fill up and stop them from happening. A decade of therapy did nothing to reduce the frequency.
Years later and several EEGs later it was determined that I had temporal lobe epilepsy. They aren’t the kind of seizure that inspires one to ask if they should put a pencil under my tongue as I flail about—no, not that kind. I have the kind of seizure that nobody but me notices, simple partial seizures. I tell you all this not to share the boring details of my brain or even to try to explain temporal lobe epilepsy but rather to tell you what the neurologist said when he saw me taking detailed notes in my journal as he explained my diagnosis.
The super cute Chinese neurologist asked if I wrote a lot. Did I keep journals? Was I a list maker? Was I very interested in philosophy and the meaning of life? I was wondering if all these questions were on his list of must have qualities in a partner. I was happy to answer yes to all of his questions. Instead of asking me out Dr. McBrainy explained that those with temporal lobe seizures are prone to hypergraphia and a search for meaning( as the temporal lobe is considered the God spot of the brain).
At first, upon getting the diagnosis I was a little disappointed that Dr. McBrainy hadn’t asked me out and I was relieved to learn that there was something real that was causing my ‘not-me’ moments. It wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t psychological. It was real. But, then I started to feel a kind of sadness about having my 95 diaries and my play, poems, and short stories reduced to a brain problem.
It wasn’t and couldn’t be the only why. There had to be others. There was the high school teacher who told me I had a talent and there was the blank pages ability to hear my words and never judge me. There was my love of reading and of words and how books had been there for me when no one else had and how my father had wanted to be a writer and never was and reasons beyond the reach of biology.
Joan Didion, being the brilliant writer she is, has another explanation of the why of writing:
“Why did I write it down? In order to remember, of course, but exactly what was it I wanted to remember? How much of it actually happened? Did any of it? Why do I keep a notebook at all? It is easy to deceive oneself on all those scores. The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” – Joan Didion, “On Keeping a Notebook,” Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Strangely I prefer being labeled a “lonely and resistant rearranger of things, an anxious malcontent”, and a child “afflicted at birth with some presentiment of loss” better than having my writing explained by a medical condition. The seizures, thanks to Dr. McBrainy, are gone; the writing, or the hypergraphia, remains.
THAT is why I write: to remember it, to rearrange what I remember. And to amuse myself.
I’ve heard of this type of epilepsy and I think it’s very self-aware of you to have realized this so early in life. (Such a good girl!
)
Pearl
It’s not having your writing explained by a medical condition. It’s proof that your writing, your talent for it is a part of you and you. It is not learnt or practised, you are naturally and according to your vocation a writer. That’s very special xx
Fascinating! I’d never heard the term hypergraphia … it sounds both compelling and oppressive.
Why are there never medical explanations for things that I WANT explained away (messiness, procrastination, poor judgment)?
So lovely, LBR. Well put.
Pearl: Those are good reasons to write. They are definitely part of why I write. I think I also write to transform; I try to take something I don’t understand and understand it or take something sad and make it funny. I love how writing can transform.
The ‘not-me’ feeling is one that will not be ignored.
pretty face: Really well said. So much better than Dr. McBrainy could manage. I really like that. Thank you.
Sal: It has never felt oppressive but I don’t think I have it as bad as some people.
WendyB: You just haven’t had your disease discovered yet. Medical science just hasn’t put a name on it yet. Give ‘em time.;-)
Sarah Von: Thank you, lovely.:-)
Wow, interesting, I get moments when talking to people and they suddenly go from being at a close distance to looking like they’re far away and everything is not quite real.
If I ever kept a diary, my handwriting is so crappy, I’d not be able to read it 20 minutes later.
Imogen: What you describe sounds a little like derealization but I am no Dr. McBrainy.
There is always typing.;-)
I do get migraines with visual disturbance every now and again – maybe it’s related!
That is why I learned to touch type.
Fascinating! Do you take medication to keep the partial seizures from recurring? You know, I have totally felt that disassociation and it is truly terrifying. You’re there, but you’re not. I’ve chosen to view it as some spiritual integration issue – like my psyche is becoming one with the universe (don’t laugh, one does what one must!) It never occurred to me that all of my interesting psychological “quirks” could be about unique brain chemistry. I mean, I am a list-loving, OCD-having, anxious, left-handed language lover. Maybe I’m worthy of a study
Oh, and Imogen – I occasionally suffer from ocular migraines so I totally know what you mean about that disorientation. It’s like your brain scrambles! It’s really interesting – but not while it’s happening to you. Strangely, on the rare occurrences when I experience them (once a year or so), I don’t have pain. So when they first started happening I freaked out over my vision!
I wonder if there is a neurological term for a person with the need to make music, dance or draw?
I’m with Wendy B on this. Is there a medication that I can take for prcrastination and bad judgement?
But, then I started to feel a kind of sadness about having my 95 diaries and my play, poems, and short stories reduced to a brain problem.Hell, falling in love is nothing but a bunch o’ biochemistry that can be pared down to atomistic scientific-ery with scanning electron microscopes (remember those grade school videos that ALWAYS mentioned those?), yet we still relish falling in love.
Dammit, there was something else I wanted to say, but wanted to reread your post first and now I can’t remember, but rest assured, it was genius.
I think Didion is channeling Proust a bit. We write, observe, interpret what we encounter, but even we can’t be sure if we’re right. So what do we do? Keep observing, writing, recording, exploring.
I write to quell the neverending narrator’s voice in my head.
K.Line: The medication issue is a whole other enchilada. Long story short I had a neurologist who put me on a whole lot os anti-seizure drug and it made me seize about 20 times a day. It got so bad I was put int he hospital to figure out why. Well, they took me off the drugs and I went down to one or two a week. See, a side effect of seizure medication is seizures. Nice, huh?
Since that episode I have been off meds and I am down to maybe one a week and more when I am near my period. Neurologists beg me to be on medications but as I have never had a grand mal seizure or anything but a partial I refuse to be on those horrible meds. They also say it is impossible for me to be having only 1-2 a week when they look at my brain activity. Shows what they know.
My long time Jungian, when I told him what I felt during a seizure, told me that people meditate a life time to feel what I feel. I am not sure about that. It is pretty terrifying to really get that this is all an illusion.
I am sure that a neurologist would love to get his hands on you. They love to study people like us, i.e. smart, insightful and attractive.;-)
Belle de Ville: Hypercrativia. I don’t know. I just made it up.;-)
If there is such a med ( other than coffee) I don’t know it and I do need it.
Randal: I don’t have love being nothing but brain/chemicals and complexes. But, for writing to be reduced to an organic anomaly makes me feel like I have no agency over it. Oh, right, agency is an illusion. Dammit. I hate insight.
Of course it was genius. You have a high functioning brain and an exceptional neural synapses so of course what every you were thinking was brilliant.
Didion has a bit of a Proustian side to her. I can see that. Only Didion lived in L.A. and is less upbeat than Proust.
Tessa: I am guessing you have Emma Thompson in your head.;-)
Oh gaaahhhh, love this post, from the “affliction,” reference which is ever-so-true, to the not wanting to have it reduced to a medical condition.
You are incredible Miss LBR, truly amazing.
tp
thepreppyprincess: Thank you. I thought this one was a dud. Hey, everyone has a dud or two.;-)
You, my friend, are soooooo kind and supportive and encouraging. Thanks!!!
Wow. Never heard of this before.
I love the idea of writing a journal, but my ‘flicktion is a severe intolerance of rejection! Oh yeah and there’s that little matter that i think I’m probably wholly uninteresting.
I think you Belette are very artistic and creative. I love that your blog gives me something to think about for the day. Yikes but now today I have to think about brain holes?!?
BTW I used Igor’s adage on my friend and she was enlightened said “you’re right I never thought of it that way”. She’s very sweet but kind of judgmental. Tell Igor he’s even helping people in the midwest.
Carry on with the awesomeness!
Savvy Mode: I don’t think that it is common knowledge that seizures can look different than a grand mal or a petite mal.
Linda: Hey, who can reject your journal? It is yours and all yours. And, I don;t for a second believe you are uninteresting. Sorry, you can’t fool me!!
Thank you, dear Linda, I am so glad you enjoy my blog. It is really nice of you to day. I hope instead of thinking about the holes in your psyche that you think about buying a journal. Huh?
I LOVE that Igor is helping others. He would too. If he knew he might charge me more.;-)
You are VERY sweet!!!!!
Le sigh. I suppose someday every single quirk of our personalities will be pinned down to some chemical/neural hiccup in our brains. Sometimes, a little mystery and mysticism is more palatable.
Oh, and my son has a similar kind of seizure activity.
Deja You are so right. I bet some day they will be able to identify the gene that makes us francophiles.
Good for you for catching them in your son. Partial seizures can be hard to diagnose in kids.
You’d probably appreciate Alice Flaherty’s book on her experience with hypergraphia as it includes really interesting research about accomplished and acclaimed writers who did/probably had the “condition” — the books called The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain. I especially like Randall’s comment below — if we were to dismiss love because it’s merely neurological, we’d be dismissing one of our central joys and preoccupations! so what if a drive to write is neurological; that doesn’t necessarily make the result any less compelling.
But think of yourself as your very own travel agent. No one has 100% control over everything outside your being except a literary supervillian and how boring would that be? You decide what you write about. Hell, you could write a play about cookies. And before anyone brings up “she wrote a play about cookies because that’s what her subconscious, puppetmastered by external stimuli, directed her to,” keep your deconstructionist crap to yourself.
As for francophile genes, that’s why I never, even being a supporter of science, read science journals. The mystery that is the poetry of life is far more interesting than the glucose and enzymes and genomes that make it all up, yabba dabba doo.
I am glad you liked it
I agree with the interior designer and I am absolutely planning to make my house look like that. My wardrobe is like that already; I naturally gravitate to about three colours anyway so it all works nicely!
As for fragrance mixing, yes I heard that they specialise in that… I suppose it’s because the fragrances are so subtle; can you imagine two Chanel scents together? Overpowering, much?? But for now I think I will stick to one scent at a time; I can barely manage that!
materfamilias: OMG!!! You are on fire with brilliant book suggestions. I am getting this one too. Thank you!!!!!
I agree that it doesn’t make the drive or the action less compelling, but just like it doesn’t feel good to understand the biology of love it, but it does take away a certain sense of free will. I think it is human nature to want to feel like an individual and that we have unlimited possibilities—the more we learn the more we see that we aren’t and that is both good and bad; it’s liberating and disappointing.
Hi Belette, Very very interesting. I sometimes have the feeling that I’m watching myself and the others arould me from the “outside” like a spectator. It’s just a very quick feeling and seem like a dream. Is it similar tou what you’ve been feeling? I suffer of terrible migraines and if I don’t take my pills immediately I can have serious visual disturbances. Once I suddenly couldn’t read anymore as I saw the characters abut couldn’t make pout the words, like reading in Polish for example! Fortunately it passed after going to sleep. I do write everything down as my memory is so short that I cannot remember what I’ve done two minutes ago! All the best. Ciao. A.
Randal: I think that Igor and psychoanalysis gives me greater access to my travel agent. I am continually less unconscious about the whys of much of what I do. Yet, there are all the whys of biology, culture, and conditioning that are harder to get to. I suppose that biology is the one that, as of yet, is hardest to free ones self from. For years I was a tabula rosa kind of gal and know I get that the table is LOADED with stuff.
Will you still comment here and be my friend if you learn that I am one of those decontructionists? The why of creation fascinates me, but of course I would be. My temporal lobe makes me do it.
Science can kill the poetry and yet it too is a myth. The notion of “objective sciences” cracks me up.
Hey, I am an easy laugh.;-)
pretty face: I do think that love of something trumps the rules. Even if it doesn’t work and you love it who cares?
I do, on occasion, mix Coco mademoiselle and L’Artisan vanille abricot and it really works. But, I didn’t come up with that idea. I read that Nicole Kidman did it and as I had both fragrances already I tried it and I liked it.
Hi Antonella: The feeling I have is very disconnected and unemotional. It feels like none of it is real and none of it matters. Truth be told that is the scariest part, that and that if I am not me then who I am.
I believe that some neuroresearchers believe there is a connection between migraines, seizure and even depression.
It must have been frightening to feel like you couldn’t read. Gosh, I can’t imagine.
” I am not sure about that. It is pretty terrifying to really get that this is all an illusion.”
I remember when I suddenly, in my Buddhist practice, according to my teacher, touched awareness….it scared the hell out of me too…so this may be true, I am not sure as he has died and now I have no guidance as to what I am doing in this regard…as always you make me think and I am wondering about people who draw AND write, although I draw much more than I write, is there something similar in the brain going on? what do you think?
fascinating post (as always) although I am deeply sorry you have gone through this suffering as a child as well as an adult…I suppose we can look at it in the perspective of it’s fodder for writing but the suffering hurts terribly, especially when one doesn’t understand what is happening to one’s self…I myself have DID, which is basically the “ability” to dissociate from reality, which as a child was a comfort and now is inconvenient and “almost” controllable….but I went to see my mother dearest a couple of days ago and felt like I stepped backward in time about 20 years, which was not good…balancing the guilt one feels with a sick, frail 81 yr old person everyone tells me is my mother with the reality of her venom is difficult at best…I know what we call her problem but FiFi tomorrow will have to enlighten me about what to do with these feelings my visit has left me with that I WISH I could dissociate from! sorry, I didn’t mean to go off somewhere about me…
xoxoxox-hoping it’s a beautiful day in LA~
I wonder if I have the same afflictions that I have always referred to as creativity …seriously
linda: Thank you!!! I have a pseudo-Buddhist friend who argues that if you really get to the place of losing the ego you wouldn’t be terrified. Let me tell you that when I have the moments when I lose my ego I am so scared.
I have to tell you that as suffering goes this was not so bad. It just lasts for seconds and then on you go. Truly, temporal lobe seizures are nothing compared to a narcissistic mother. DID, in my opinion, is a much bigger thing to deal with than seconds long seizures.
I hope that Fifi helps, that you are feeling better and that storms die down in NorCal.
xoxo
Maegan: I suppose with every affliction comes a gift. Creativity is not a bad gift.
Tchaikovsky had fits as a child where he would throw himself down and grab his head because the music in his head was driving him crazy. He had to write it down, get it out compose it so that it made sense. It’s so fascinating how chemicals in the brain come together to create artisitc gifts.
Your blogger mates understand and share quite a bit of this malady. REgardless of the name of the condition, it is a creative act, and as such it cannot be denied.
Leah: Supposedly Byron, Dante, Dostoevsky, Molière, Petrarch, Poe, and Tennyson all had TLE. I only wish the TLE gave me the talent those guys had.
lakeviewer: I do bet that a lot of people with TLE do blog. Where else can hypergraphiacs find each other?;-)
Compelling + facinating!!
I learn new things everyday (merci!)…’depersonilization and derealization’…well, I plan to say it 10 times in a row today! ~WooHoo* I’m warming up my tongue now…
I find it typical that a medic has to pigeon hole a person into some category he has read in a medical dictionary, it is so overly simplistic an attitude, which is why I shun doctors for my homeopath.
The medical world may sneer, but she would never make such a judgement, it smacks of saying “oh she so headstrong, she must be an Aries”
I guess my camera is my visual notebook I feel very odd if I do not have it with me even if I do not use it.
I also keep a note book but perversely I rip the pages out once I have used the information I have stored, leaving a few drawings Leyla has done and some jewellery designs. By the end I have but a few pages left before I start my next one. My note books often contain a stream of consciousness that I do not want seen by others but that I feel better for some reason writing it down. I also find them useful for train journeys and galleries where often I am unable to take a photograph. Sometimes the act of writing can aid my memory, sometimes it can be a very cathartic exercise just to write it down.
“Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.” Does not quite ring true to me, I am very happy with my own company so I am never lonely, however malcontent is pretty spot on!
I was listening to a book on my Ipod the other day and a character makes the observation that something is like a pair of glasses, it helps one see but is not the thing that sees. Maybe the brain is like that too. It helps us process, but is not the thing that processes. There must be a creator behind all that mechanical stuff.
I think the urge to write is wonderful, like a gift from nature. Melville, if I remember correctly, had the same urge, writing Moby Dick in three months. Or was it six? But, I guess my point is, I think this is another way of nature ensuring that some of us become poets and creators enriching the lives of others that way, rather than all hunter gatherers of some sort or other.
LENORENEVERMORE: I am happy to expand your already highly impressive vocabulary.;-)
indigo16: I am in the process of writing a post on other labels and how in feel in response to them and this medical one is just one of many I bristle at.
Hey, museums are one day going to want to show your notebooks filled with ideas next to your photos. I do LOVE seeing artists notebooks. It is lovely to see what inspired it and a little of the magic of the process.
Like you, I also don’t relate to loneliness. I do enjoy being alone and I never feel alone when I am writing.
I’m glad you are able to control your seizures in a way that does not rob you of yourself. Is writing an affliction or addiction or both? Does one write because one can or because one can’t keep from writing? Are gifts curses or enlightenment? I think if we could examine the brains of the brilliant ones who have gone before us, we would find medical evidence of their genius. At the end of the day, we are what we make of what we have. By the way, have you read Krapp’s Last Tape? Now that is a person who rearranges memories!
Cheryl: I absolutely love your take on this. I even called He-weasel at work to read it to him. Brilliant. I love the idea that nature wants creative expression and so we are all born with different physical makeup that can lead to that diversity. Really beautiful, Cheryl. Thank you. Beautiful. Le sigh!
home before dark: You ask really good questions that have inspired further thinking and maybe even more posts. I have never read that play but as I look at the synopsis it sounds like a play I need to read. Thanks.:-)
I have never heard of this before. It’s all very interesting. I think your writing is very beautiful, it’s one of the reasons I come back for every post.
Very interesting description of this malady you endure. At least you have an honest explanation. I have been to your site more or less as a stalker – since you have such a huge fan base. I shall return more frequently.
Fascinating post! Ans so funny as always. Sounds to me that you have ‘just-right-graphia.
Who said “i write to figure out what I think” (or something like this.) That’s why I write.
Often it feels to me that the people who don’t write are the ones with holes in their brains.
corine/ hidden in france
TopSurf: I thank you so much. You give me so much encouragement and I appreciate it more than you know.
themom: Thank you so much for coming by and leaving a comment. I LOVE seeing you here. Please do come back.:-))))
Corine: I prefer “just-right-graphia” to hypergraphia. Hyper sounds so hyper.;-)
Yes, I soooooo understand the writing to know how I feel, think and believe. I think I wrote a post about that when John Updike died.
Hee-hee!! Non-writers are the holey heads.
My niece has this type of epilepsy and she is very much an introvert, doesn’t have much self esteem and contantly questions decisions she has made. All this for a 13 year old. It breaks my heart.
And, on notebooks: I have two in my handbag (in case I swap bags and one serves as an extra), one in my car, one on my bedside table, one on my desk, one in the kitchen, even one in the windowsill of my bathroom, near the tub!
Why all this writing? Maybe to get all those words out, those sentences, which, whether I use them or not are there in my mind. The notebooks somehow reassure me, comfort me. This gives me another thought: Does Igor have practicing rights in Australia?
I had similar experiences as a child and would freak out friends by telling them if I hadn’t been born as me I might very well have been as them.. or somebody else entirely but that I would still be here. It seemed perfectly logical to me and still does.
It wasn’t until a few years ago I suffered the grand mal that mri’s showed a congenital avm that had caused it. I’d probably been having les petites for years but, being me, had enjoyed. Now that it’s gone I still keep my journals, read and meditate as always.
We are always ourselves.
Oh Belette these events or seizures sound terribly disconcerting and frightening. I have had a long history of migraines, now in remission, and some bouts with depression. How odd that there are connections..
I wonder if there is really any sense to defining so much of human behavior or nature or inspiration as a biological phenomenon, or is it just a way to put everyone in boxes and feel better about it?
Sorry for the incoherent ramble, I am tired tonight. I spent the day preparing for a dinner party and now I am ready to crash, but I couldn’t go to bed without reading your post.
Mervat: I am so sorry to hear about your niece.Do you link her introversion and self doubt with her TLE?
I have a notebook in my car and often 2 in my handbag. I am addicted to them and that is fine with me. nothing like a new notebook to make me feel that anything is possible.
If I tell you that Igor can practice in Australia are you going to try to get him to move?? I am afraid if you want to see Igor you will have to come here.;-)
Susan: Do you link that knowing to your seizures or do you believe it is true or do you believe both?
Have you read Lying Awake: A Novel by Marc Salzman or Seized: Temporal Lobe Epilepsy as a Medical, Historical, and Artistic Phenomenon by Eve LaPlante? Both are really interesting books about the connection between seizures and spirituality and creativity.
ha ha ha, wendyB’s comment made me laugh (i was thinking the same thing).
but this post is fascinating.
i’ll be exploring my own and somewhat recent memory problems sometime this month or next. we are at the mercy of our brains – it’s fun to be an audience to yours.
Mardel: I read that microseizures might be responsible for migraines and depression. Really fascinating.
I was both relieved and troubled by the diagnosis and the box that Dr. Mcbrainy wanted to put me in.
You are sweet. I hope you get some good rest and my blog would be here tomorrow. Hope your party is a big success.:-)
up and down town/M: Ooh, I look forward to seeing your memory based illustrations.
Thanks! And, my brain thank you too.:-p
Those are psychological estimations of what you experienced. Philosophers and spiritualists would say they were shadow remembrances of past lives, a feeling that you’re living in this body but not understanding how you got there…
just sayin’
I prefer to label you “simply brilliant” ….
I remember, though, those same moments as a child as you describe!
I had to respond again, because while I have been intrigued with Krapp both as metaphor and the play, I think I should point out that Krapp was finally unable to reconcile the tapings he made on his birthday every year with what he remembered, and it drove him to suicide.
I think there is time for a rewriting of Krapp as holder and tormentor of memory. Perhaps as a new play. Perhaps as a series of short stories that reveal how people treat this human condition. With all of today’s ability to record what we do, is there still a mechanism for unedited (and is that a reality?) memory?
I think you are the perfect writer to ponder and to write it out for all to know that memory is a rather slippery slope.
My neighbor suffered with brain cancer for years. Each operation left him less and less himself. I will always remember him sitting in my garden and saying with still a twinkle in his eye, “You know it’s a funny thing about your mind. You don’t miss it until it’s gone.”
I didn’t want you to ramble alone with Krapp unwarned, so I have rambled for you. You have been born with the mind for greatness and we will support you in your struggles.
I just recently found your blog, naturally off of another blog. Indeed a fascinating story but very credible. A lot of neuroscience research is done at my school (Caltech) and the entire field is fascinating.
On a different note, and not to make little of your experiences, you are really funny!
I hope to meet you someday.
-m
I’ve been following you for a while now, but this post today blew me away and compelled me to comment. I utterly understand what you are talking about and it was wonderful to find it articulated so well.
I have not been actually diagnosed with hypergraphia, but recently found out that my small son has asperger’s syndrome, and it has become increasingly apparent that I too have a place somewhere upon the autistic spectrum. To find this out was traumatic not because something is “wrong” with us, but because the quirks and qualities that make us US are reduced to… symptoms.
Thankyou for this wonderful post. I think you’re great.
Sarah: I prefer to think you are very, very, very kind.:-)))))
You had them too? Are they gone now?
home before dark: Huh, really interesting! I thank you for coming back. I wish I was reading this play in a book group with you. But, read it I will.
I have a ritual on my bday in which I do a written year in review and then plan what I will achieve for the year. Perhaps if I take all those notebooks I will a play that is a second rate imitation of this genius!!!;-) But you know what they say about imitation.:-)
You are very kind to think I could do any justice to the slippery slope of memory. Sincerely, I thank you.
When I was an undergrad I worked in a retirement home and one of my favorite residents had Alzhemiers. She told me to write something about my life every day so I would have when I was old and just in case I ended up in her shoes. I was already a writer/journaler but I took her advice seriously.
I know this woman went to a very good womans college and that she had a high IQ and an interesting life but she couldn’t even remember her major in college. Heartbreaking.
I am deeply and truly touched by your belief in me and by the depth and kindness of your comment. It is almost more than I can take in–but I will. Hugs.
MrsLittleJeans: Thank you for finding me and thanks to what ever blog sent you over.:-) Neuroscience is fascinating. A million years ago I did research for a pediatric neurologist and working with him cured me of thinking I might want to be a MD.
Thank you. I am so happy when my writing is enjoyed.
That would be lovely.
indigo doll: Thank you for delurking!!!! Thank you!!!! Truly, I love it when I get to meet who is reading my blog.
I am still a bit gobsmacked that this post seemed to resinate with people. I am so glad it rang true for you. It is a difficult thing to write about—how to relay something that is so unreal.
It is extraordinary how a diagnose can be both liberating and limiting. I think it is human nature to try and make sense of things and name them and that is what doctors do.
Thanks again!!!
oh no, not on my blog. i’m taking my brain to the dr.
This was fascinating to read. I’ve had some strange instances over the years that might be similar. Lately, though, I’m thinking along the lines of what Braja said.
You know my dementor? I can’t help but think that there’s some psychic cord that binds us (and strangles us at times) that just maybe stretches beyond the here and now.
I have a sister who suffered this- we did not know she suffered epilepsy becasue she did not ‘flop about” We just thought she was spaced out..or become someone else
When she was diagnosed and put on medication her life turned around.
She was not bright at school, now she is a lawyer!
)
Braja: Could be. What do I know? If that was the case what would you do about it? Curious.
"…the writing, or the hypergraphia, remains"
And we are all thankful & lucky it does!!!!
up and down town: Well if you don’t blog about it how will I learn if you are okay? Please let me know.
xo
Lisa: Supposedly deja vu is temporal lobe activity. But, some people think it is past life stuff. I would love to hear more about your thoughts about the demmentors.
Simon: Thank you so much for writing. I am so happy your sister is doing so well. That is great. And, p.s. I came by your blog and I have to tell you that my He-weasel LOVES Jeeps.
Kayleigh: Thank you, gorgeous.:-)
I’ll never know for sure whether I had seizures prior to the big one since I never experienced any of my mind states as abnormal. How can any of us actually describe a subjective inner landscape? I just know the essential something that existed before is still a part of me and I’m content.
I’ve made a note of the books you recommend because they look fascinating and because you thought to tell me about them.
Susan: I was telling Igor yesterday that so many inner experiences change with time. If I talk today about something that happened last week the experience changes with distance. But, something about the seizures don’t change. As soon as I start to talk or to remember them I am right back into the feeling of not being me. It so clear and true. There is me and then there is not me. For me, it is obvious and unchanging. Weird, huh?
Forgive my tangent but he went on to say that one of the issues with my mother is that I know it is “not me” that my mother loves but some other. I know it as well as I know when I am having a seizure. Hmmmm…you got me thinking.
I would love to know what you think of the books. I especially liked the Salzman novel. Another interesting and sometimes agrivating book is “Lying” which is about the subjectivity of memoir and seizures. It’s by Lauren Slater.
That has to be one of the most brilliant things I have ever read. You were right, and it has a good purpose. Brilliant!
xx
Hammie: I have had a rough afternoon and am a bit riddled with doubt. I thank you. You are always such a support and encouragement to me. Thank you. Can we do our book tour together?
xo
Thanks for sharing this, Belette. Fascinating, and I never knew of this medical condition. Whatever’s in your brain, though, I think there’s more than just chemistry going on in your writing. A divine spark of some kind. Lovely as always. xo
I loved this post and am very happy I came across your blog.
I have read back on some of your past posts and admire your writing style and your honesty of the things that you have encountered in your life.
I am a fellow red headed lady with the same problem of wrinkly forehead syndrome. I have recently moved to Paris and so it was nice to come across a few similarities, small as they may be!
I look forward to reading more. Lovely blog, gorgeous header pic.
sallymandy: I am touched by your compliment. Thank you, Sally. You are such an amazingly encouraging friend.
pplongstocking: I am SOOOO Happy you found my blog. Thanks for popping over and reading and commenting and reading past posts.
I cannot wait to visit your blog and read about your Parisian adventures.
It seems we have lots in common: Paris, red hair,foreheads, and a love of Pippy!!!
Thanks again!!!!!