Age, illness and identity : some thoughts

I bumped into a young man the other day who I had met for the first time a couple of days previously. I nodded, said "hello" expectantly and then noticed his blank expression. "You don't remember me, do you?" I asked. "I met you the other day with Val and her dog, and we chatted about your dogs".

The guy's face still looked blank. "You would have remembered me back in the days when I was pretty and young" I found myself blurting out, slightly accusingly. He eventually remembered our meeting and we exchanged a couple of sentences before moving on.

I don't mind that I'm not pretty and young anymore (well, not that much, anyway), but it has been a strange process over the last few years to adjust to the experience of seeming to be invisible to most people, especially men. Sometimes I find it amusing, sometimes liberating, and other times I want to scream in frustration "I'm still the same person and still as worthy of notice!".

My illness (M.E. or chronic fatigue syndrome; take your pick) started about 8 or 9 years ago and was gradual onset in that I would have short bouts of feeling ill followed by complete recovery. This went on for about two years, during which time I would describe the illness as "something similar to, but definitely not M.E.". A period of denial and bewilderment, I suppose. After the initial two years, the illness settled into a pattern of periods of acute illness (unable to do anything much), followed by weeks of intermediate illness (able to do some things if I pace myself).

The start of the illness coincided with the feeling of being middle-aged (late 40's onwards; I'm now 53) and was followed by an extremely traumatic time for my family. These things added together (illness, age, period of high stress) hit me hard. I changed from someone who was extremely fit and healthy, able to exercise for hours without any tiredness; someone who was considered attractive and generally taken to be about 10 years younger than I am; someone who was highly intelligent, to ...

Well, trying to be objective in describing myself now I would say that I definitely look my age, I'm certainly not fit and healthy, and my intelligence, although not entirely gone, has been affected by my illness in that my mind often feels fuggy and clouded. Gone that sharp, incisive intellect and ability to articulate fluently, and in its place ... again, hard to describe accurately, but let's just say I often feel pretty "thick".

On a good day emotionally I can smile about the decline of my intellectual powers, and it's almost interesting to hear myself flounder a bit in a conversation after years of being smoothly articulate. On those good days, I feel mellow and accepting of the loss of my youth and looks, and occasionally fairly accepting of my illness, despite its constraints.

I have had times, though, where I ponder the question "who am I?", something to which I always thought I knew the answer (silly me) and from my own experiences, and also working in a Nursing Home with people who suffer from Alzheimer's and other dementias, I realise now that the "I", the identity which both I and others perceive to be "me", is actually extremely fluid.