cursedcalendar (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cursedcalendar) wrote2022-12-17 02:05 pm
cursedcalendar) wrote2022-12-17 02:05 pm
Entry tags:
fears that i have
tw for talks of dementia and death. sorry if this one is a little serious
I don't think if I've ever talked about any of this before so I'll take the chance to talk about it here
Two of my biggest fears include forgetting and being forgotten.
They aren't my biggest fears (that spot goes to my very unusual fear of bees.) but they're definitely up there.
I would rather die in any other way than to die of dementia. The idea of me slowly dying while of all of my fond memories leak out of my head like a sink that somebody forgot to fully turn off terrifies me.
In one of my ADHD-fueled procrastination trips, I watched a video on dementia. While watching I learned of a test simply known as the clock test. In this test, the dementia patient is instructed to draw a clock, with the hands pointing to a specific time (in all the footage I've seen, the time as been 11:10.) Seeing the results of these tests in the later stages of dementia is....actually, I can't really find the words to describe it. Mind-boggling? Scary? Like a car crash you can't look away from? Kinda like that.
The really weird thing is, the fear doesn't drive me away from learning more about it? Like, I find Everywhere at the End of Time very interesting. I'll probably never listen to the whole thing because I don't have 6 hours on my hands, but it's interesting.
(I also find Heartaches by Al Bowly to be a very beautiful song on its own.)
My fear of being forgotten is kinda similar. It'll hopefully be a while before I pass on. But when I do, I want to be remembered as something. As an artist. As a photographer. As a sister. As a friend. As a weirdo who posts gibberish like "is godzilla forklift certified" on her Twitter account and makes weirdcore in her spare time. Something.
Call it selfishness, but I don't want to be forgotten.
I'd say that's about it for this post. Thank you for listening to me ramble. I love you all <3
I don't think if I've ever talked about any of this before so I'll take the chance to talk about it here
Two of my biggest fears include forgetting and being forgotten.
They aren't my biggest fears (that spot goes to my very unusual fear of bees.) but they're definitely up there.
I would rather die in any other way than to die of dementia. The idea of me slowly dying while of all of my fond memories leak out of my head like a sink that somebody forgot to fully turn off terrifies me.
In one of my ADHD-fueled procrastination trips, I watched a video on dementia. While watching I learned of a test simply known as the clock test. In this test, the dementia patient is instructed to draw a clock, with the hands pointing to a specific time (in all the footage I've seen, the time as been 11:10.) Seeing the results of these tests in the later stages of dementia is....actually, I can't really find the words to describe it. Mind-boggling? Scary? Like a car crash you can't look away from? Kinda like that.
The really weird thing is, the fear doesn't drive me away from learning more about it? Like, I find Everywhere at the End of Time very interesting. I'll probably never listen to the whole thing because I don't have 6 hours on my hands, but it's interesting.
(I also find Heartaches by Al Bowly to be a very beautiful song on its own.)
My fear of being forgotten is kinda similar. It'll hopefully be a while before I pass on. But when I do, I want to be remembered as something. As an artist. As a photographer. As a sister. As a friend. As a weirdo who posts gibberish like "is godzilla forklift certified" on her Twitter account and makes weirdcore in her spare time. Something.
Call it selfishness, but I don't want to be forgotten.
I'd say that's about it for this post. Thank you for listening to me ramble. I love you all <3
no subject
The novel... it's kind of unfortunate because I made a pretty okay I guess 1.0 version and put it out there, and was in the middle of a massive rewrite that was going to change all sorts of stuff (new and expanded scenes so much that it was going to be more like two novels by the time it was done, the character of Dr. Cameron Signey is a trans woman now, etc.) and everything was just so much better written (there are some passages in there that I still think turned out incredible to this day) and etc. but... life got in the way, it was never done, and at this point it's never going to be done because then real life happened and ended up being a little too spot on; it was an original story at the time it was written but it would feel cheaply ripped from the headlines now.
Anyway, there's this major worldwide plague that has wiped out basically everyone who's exposed, to the point that the nameless city everyone is from declared the entire outside world a lost cause, built this big dome and domed themselves off, and legally anyone who has any unprotected exposure to the outside, even for a second, is considered Afflicted, and the Afflicted are to be instantly killed and incinerated on sight (to prevent the plague from spreading, and keep the inside city safe.) The city is ruled by this evil fascist mob boss type, but the story actually takes place outside, where a group of exposed Afflicted formed a tribe and is just trying to survive as long as they can, maybe chase a rumor that there could be another living city far to the north if they migrate there (maybe,) leave a legacy of some sort, make their lives mean something while struggling with the roaming (hazard-suit wearing) death squads tasked with looking for Afflicted outside, and the fact that they're still sick and dying even if they can keep ahead of the Hunters and avoid being killed. "Can they pass on their legacy before they pass on?" was the main tagline.
Anyway it's not a happy story and the odds of your favorite character in it making it out alive are statistically not great, but I still like having made it. I just wish I could have gotten the rewrite done before it was too late, because now it feels like the only version that actually exists is the inferior one.
(I mean I still have the "what I have so far" of the rewrite saved locally and it's awesome, but the problem with that version is it is of course incredibly unfinished and it just kind of abruptly stops about 60% of the way through. Though it still more or less follows the major plot beats of the original, so you could like, read that, then read the official version the rest of the way through to see how the story ends, if you don't mind the fact that it suddenly takes a sharp nosedive in the quality of how good a writer I was and Cameron gets misgendered for the entire rest of the book once you switch back.)
UH BUT YEAH LONG ASS RAMBLE ASIDE point is, I think about legacies a lot too. And I know the sense of oblivion that comes with memory loss (like being blackout drunk or whatever, the existential question of to what extent your consciousness may as well exist when you're in that blackout state) is Sara's greatest fear, so I think we as a system get that one, too.