My Version of the Major CFS Symptom:
Cognitive Dysfunction

by Jaime Wellman

I don't even know where to begin, well I guess in a way I just did. Not knowing or being sure about anything is one of my main problems. I feel so sick. I'm not feeling sorry for myself because that's not how I am. Maybe I do feel sorry for myself, but not in that way. I feel sorry for the person I use to be, the one that was always on the go, always doing physical activities, could do anything I wanted to do as long I set my mind to it. Now I can't even set my mind on which room of the house I would like to go in next.

I feel sorry for me because, well I was so smart, I know I still am and that I will be able to use all that again, but it bothers me that it had to come to a stand still at all. I know I'm missing out on things, and a couple of months ago that really bothered me. Well it bothered me as much as my head would let it. Part of my head seems to be filled with something, not letting me use all of it, it is the weirdest feeling I could have ever imaged before. Now even though I can tell I think weird and not right it doesn't seem to bother me even though I know its there and that it should. Sometimes when I talk to people, I seem pretty much ok to them, I guess, but other times when I talk to someone I can tell from their face that I'm not talking right or normal. Even though I know that, there's nothing I can do to change it from not right to normal. But the funniest thing about it is I know in my head that I'm not talking right and I should try to see if I can fix it, but something just won't connect to carry that out. I had to write a 5 paragraph essay for English class, and something just blocked doing it right out of my head. It sounds silly, almost like I just didn't feel like doing it or I didn't want to and I was being lazy, but none of that is true. I didn't just decide that I didn't want to do the essay, but yet that is the only way to describe why I couldn't do it, it's so strange. I have all day and I really don't do much all day either, I don't even know what it is I do all day, so it's not like I feel that by doing something that I'm suppose to do, I would be wasting my time or anything. I don't know what it is that is blocking me from doing things. I try to see if maybe I can fix it every time it happens (which is a lot), and every time I can't come up with a way to help myself. I see and hear things sometimes a little bit different from what I either know or remember they should be. I feel isolated from things, yet I'm not upset about it.

Everything that comes up with this, I just take it like it's no big deal, even though I know in my head It should. I think that I really don't know, even though I do, that I'm sick. That seems strange to me because of everything else I say about this, and I still say I know but I don't know. It's like there is a dividing line right down the middle of my head, one side hears one thing and the other hears another, so they go back and forth trying to get everything right, but they're not working together. Lately I've been noticing that I leave things out, like there's a big gap. To me the gap is not there, so I guess I don't notice until something comes up that shows me it was there, and yet all along I sort of know it's there. Sometimes it's just best to do things on my own because then if there is a "gap" it's no big deal because even though I think I know about it, I'm not actually thinking about it. It's like someone is always messing with my head. Another way to describe it is that 1/2 of my head has taken a long vacation and partying all the time, 1/4 of it has boarded a plane and flown right out the back of my head, and the other 1/4 that's left is trying to compensate for all of it.

I could sit and try to explain it all day and I would still not be able to explain it in a way that shows it exactly how it is. I can't even find the right words to explain it, I don't think that even when I get better and am able to express things better, that I will be able to describe it. If I could explain it then, I would be able to write the #1 best psychological movie there is. My imagination runs wild with things, sometimes things seem over exaggerated, almost like something off of Alice In Wonderland. It's seems that even on top of all of this other stuff there is still something else. With all the things happening in my head, even though I can't describe them, to other people, I can describe most of it to myself in my head, but just can't speak it. This other thing is so indescribable and so different, that if I could describe it, I think it would scare some people, that's where the movie part comes in. I know this thing is there, but yet I'm not sure because it's not like the other mind playing things, like having a gap in places. With the gap, at least sometimes you can actually see that it was there sometimes. Maybe it's because my head seems to be filled with something, but I don't think so. It almost like there are things going on way in the back of my head, but it won't let me see what's going on, and every so often, it plays little tricks on me or sends something to the front of my head to thrown everything off and confuse everything. I just recently became ill, August of 1995, but that's been long enough for me.