A Dead End Called Solipsism

Yes, I am going crazy.

I fear that I have begun the long slide into dementia that my mother took before me. I am about the same age she was when her decline began.

It is subtle, just around the edges of my awareness. Fire has broken out on the perimeter of the realm. I can still function, but not so well.

I lose things, can't remember words, forget meetings, don't finish tasks. More people are unhappy with my performance at work. I spill my coffee more often. Conversations lose me. I can't understand the news, Megan's plans for the house in El Morro; my fingers no longer play the pieces I used to play on guitar; I am inappropriate in conversation.

Terror gestates just beneath my consciousness. I lapse into solitude that is my only refuge. More like solipsism, where even the self-talk fails to make sense.

So, yes, I am losing it. Like we all do eventually. And I have to look at things, clearly, directly, fully disclosed.

I have not lived my life. That is the problem. I have not read, have not shown up, have held back, and now have to pay the price or snap in the process. I have not faced my demons. I feel murderous as a result, and want to blame someone else. I want to run and not go quietly. That is one way.

Not such a good way.

The way I really want to enter into my decline is to turn it into beauty, to mindfully record the subtleties of the descent.

So what beauty can come from such a dead-end road, a road that only gets narrower and dimmer?

We will see. We will see.