And really even though I am far more observant and self-aware than most people I really cannot even come close to understanding what is happening to my brain. Why? Consider the following example. Have you ever noticed that once in a while you remember something from your childhood that is totally random and is brought to mind for reasons you can’t explain? Think right now of some obscure memory from the very early part of your life.
Now, what would it be like if ten minutes ago that memory had just disappeared from your mind? If you had just never thought of it again?
It would be like precisely nothing.
So that’s part of what I mean that I cannot understand what is happening to me because so many things in my brain are dying off and disappearing all the time. A vast number of habits. Skills. Rehearsed, ingrained behaviors that have had their patterns laid down in the brain since childhood. Left to atrophy and disappear from my brain forever. My behaviors, personality, slowly being decimated. Slowly, surely, huge parts of me dying off and I will never even be aware of a great deal of it.
Is it reassuring that I will never even realize it, or is it terrifying?