I have been sitting in front of my computer for over an hour now. I first opened a word processing program, and on a blank document, tried to express my current situation and circumstances there, but no words came to me. I then opened a document in which I'd previously compiled several different journal-type entries, thinking the terror I feel when faced with an entirely blank document would abate, but it did not. Now I find myself writing this post here, and it is somewhat easier, knowing these words are pointed in the direction of a community made up of individuals who have perhaps themselves experienced similar symptoms, and that they won't be absorbed into my computer's nothingness, hidden away from all eyes.
I regularly meet with several medical professionals, and try to explain my experience with words to them, but them understanding my struggle requires the use exact mental processes that seem to have degenerated within me. There's always a certain juncture during my conversations with these professionals wherein I say "I wish I had the ability to properly articulate what it's like for me to be experiencing this" or "this simplistic explanation only represents a fraction of this growing disability I so desperately want to speak about to you without such monumental hangups, pauses and blanking-outs." After I've said such things to these medical professionals, they all respond with something to the tune of "The language you just used to describe your inability to improperly articulate what it is you're struggling with evidences you have an even stronger understanding of language and its grammatical constructs than most, and you were able to easily provide me with a logical walkthrough, an eye-opening portal to your perceived deficiencies, so your issue may be nothing more than a phantom, a kind of neurosis brought on by nothing short of the most serious perseveration."
After the medical professional's more or less unvarying response, I begin to shake wildly, running my hands up and along my jawline, applying forceful amounts of pressure to the area, and then gradually descend to my thighs and legs, rubbing them as one would during a spasm or cramp. Under normal circumstances, when this problem of mine isn't being openly discussed, I also operate quite nervously and tentatively, but the medical environment amplifies my behavior to an entirely different and scary degree. Soon only individual, unrelated syllables come to mind, and I involuntarily say them aloud, as if experiencing some kind of epileptic fit. It should be noted that my inner-consciousness remains intact during this time, but what I exhibit externally feels beyond my control, unlike who I know myself to be. By saying I'm able to maintain inner-consciousness, I mean that my ability to understand and interpret input remains: I would have no difficulty tracking a conversation or interaction between two other people, or following the information and facts presented within a newspaper article or book, but it would be nearly impossible for another person to verify I had understood either of these things.
I have told a select number of relatives, in addition to these medical professionals, that I feel I may be losing my ability to speak altogether, but they respond with nothing but incredulousness. How can that which cannot be adequately encapsulated in speech or text be explained to someone? I wish to remain someone with the capability of speaking, however brief my average responses may be, but I worry tremendously about the possibility of my being helped when the thing plaguing me is currently unnamable. When I do talk with people on a day-to-day basis, usually about pretty innocuous stuff, each word used to construct my response feels as if its been mined from the deep depths of my consciousness, as if its dragging itself heavily through the mud unwillingly as it makes its way from mind to mouth. Each word is like that stubborn last coin left rattling around in a child's piggy bank, confined within the world it's always inhabited until it's randomly, luckily, been shaken at the precise angle which causes its release and relief.
I have had to tell people "Sorry, I can't find words right now" and left them in a state of undoubted confusion, making me appear all the more stranger and unknowable. I would like to find some possible solutions for this degeneration. Each day I worry so much for myself. I go everywhere and everyone, seemingly, is a talker, always chattering away about something, almost effortlessly. I struggle to understand how I might get somewhere without this characteristic, with my ability to verbalize noticeably languishing. If my preferences could somehow be fully met, I'd choose to inhabit a world in which one could not only get by, but flourish, without issuing any output, remaining unknown and lost in his own thought, but I know there are perhaps some qualities I possess that others might benefit from, which could possibly endear me to them. And so I try to cultivate those.
I look forward to any of your responses, and will gladly answer any questions you may have about where I'm finding myself, as I realize this post's objectives are opaque, and that it might be written in such a way so as to make it not easily understood.
24 Jun 2013, 3:33 am
