No Parole Hearings For Old Men

I spend a lot of time searching for analogies. It's what I do, I guess.

Recently, I tried to make an analogy between someone getting out of prison after 3-1/2 years and my health situation. It's not a great analogy, granted. This hasn't been anything like prison.

But the point I was trying to land was about change, my change. This new guy here. I said that if I came out of jail and told you I was a different man, you'd probably accept that with no questions asked. Different.

Aside from the lameness ("lamity" should be a word), though, there's another problem with this analogy. I was just trying to suggest to some people that the man they knew back in 2022 isn't here anymore. Not quite, anyway. I wasn't in solitary confinement and my freedom wasn't in question, but you know. I was kept away from the general population.

Here's the problem, though – I'm still in jail.

I didn't undergo something, change in response, and now I'm new. Every day is a challenge in ways and the cumulative effect of that has to be change. And I'm guessing it's small, quiet, relentless change. This whole thing feels relentless.

I've known a few people in my life who have real problems with this sort of thing. They seem to need stasis, to have things settled so they can process.

These are people who will make references and assumptions based on a comment I made in college, for example. "You really like that music, I know." What the actual fork? I don't even REMEMBER liking it, and so on. It was a constant battle that I eventually gave up fighting.

But I think a lot of us, especially as we age, tend to box things up and expect them to stay there. It's not a bad call in most cases; we are predictable creatures.

It's just that life happens and it did, sorry. Not the same guy.

"Brain fog" (the term) used to annoy me. It's too easy, too simple, too casually descriptive of something that by definition can't really be described.

Now I use it all the time because people get it, full stop. I have fogginess in my brain place.

"Executive function" is another, and I've been using that one a lot lately. I really just mean I don't really have a brain manager anymore, working in the background. Everything has to be simplified for me now, simple steps, smaller tasks, more repetition. You can figure it out. We probably all have some experience with people who've had strokes.

And yikes, am I right? But if it feels like I'm straddling the fence between fact and theatricality, let me suggest that I'm too damn tired to be a drama queen. I had a hypoxic brain injury. It's not a status symbol.

It's almost comical that I've suddenly uprooted myself and upset all these people when I can barely plan breakfast. I desperately need someone running the show who's not me, but here we are.

So yeah, words and terms. I'm not even sure "long Covid" will stick; I read a lot of "post-Covid syndrome" stuff out there now. I've been so surprised at how many people seem to have never heard the term (or, one imagines, read a newspaper) that I rarely use it with new people -- I just tend to tell the story, I got Covid and never got better, etc.

But that thing that my brain used to do? Not so much anymore so yeah, I would say I'm at least a slightly different person. And the fact that I'm currently living in the desert southwest, a place so contraindicated it seems dumb to even bring it up, might be another clue.

("Action hero" doesn't quite fit)