The brain in the jar wants out, you know.

November 18, 2017 3:33 PM

A marginal but useful definition of insanity is not knowing what genre of book you are in; depression is knowing, but being helpless to change it.

Beth Boyle Machlan on writing, memory, and helplessness.
posted by Rumple (9 comments total)

I wish I did not relate to this essay so well. I've never had ECT, but I have dissociative amnesia and have almost no memories prior to college due to trauma. My executive function is excellent, my recall is pathetic. One of the things I am most terrified of, is completely losing my mind in a quite literal way. Not just your average lost mind, but part of me worries that I may lose what is left. I am so grateful to my therapist and to my husband for keeping me grounded in the here and now. For some reason, Alzheimer's dementia doesn't scare me as much, mostly because those that I've cared for with Alzheimer's, have anosognocia, no awareness of their disease. That doesn't scare me nearly as much as the brain in a jar that the author describes.
posted by Sophie1 at 4:04 PM on November 18, 2017 [9 favorites]

A terrific piece of writing on terrible matters. Thanks for posting.
posted by Don.Kinsayder at 4:36 PM on November 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

I live in constant low-level fear of slipping back into schizoaffective disorder, which I was diagnosed with once during an extremely traumatic stretch of time that triggered a clinically depressive episode. So far since I've been going through the breakup of my family and briefly faced the possibility of short or longer term homelessness, I haven't had any recurrence of schizoaffective symptoms, but my ADD, abandonment PTSD, and situational depression have been crushing at times. I don't worry so much about losing my sanity as being marginalized and gaslighted. When it all started, I'd been given a chance to testify against a former employer over some labor issues and I feared at the time there was a deliberate whisper campaign around town to preemptively discredit any testimony I might have given (I had reliable accounts from some of the folks I worked with personally that something along those lines was going on and that some of my managers had been lying about certain things to try to make me look bad), but knowing my own history of paranoia and with my family situation already under extraordinary stress, I chose not to get involved in the court case. I never really wanted to get involved anyway, just wanted out of the whole screwed up mess and to get on with my life. Still not sure to what degree all that mess played directly into my family breaking up and the divorce, but it almost certainly was a big factor in increasing the overall tension and stress of the situation.

Anyway, long rambling point being this seems interesting and relateable. Thanks!
posted by saulgoodman at 4:39 PM on November 18, 2017 [1 favorite]

Like Young, Lang is Canadian;....also Danko, Robertson & Mitchell.

Going back now to read the article again.
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:55 PM on November 18, 2017

A terrific essay, relevant to my interests and beautifully written.
posted by From Bklyn at 7:49 PM on November 18, 2017

An amazing piece of writing.

I came here to simply say that I once experienced the brain-waking-before-the-body situation she describes and it was also for me incredibly terrifying. The sheer effort I put out to try and open a single eyelid, to move a finger or limb, to grunt and let my family, who sat, talking, around me as I lay, no longer sleeping, on the couch, know that I needed help - still, that memory haunts me. It was also impossible to convey the terror afterwards, and the disinterested responses made it seem even more unreal.

Physical impairment, failure of faculties, the decline of self all weigh on me as I age and watch a body that never felt like mine wind its way further and further down a path of vanishing potential.

In its own way, just as she sees a mirror in her father's loss, the same sensation of helplessness creeps in for me as the years consume unrealized dreams of other selves, stillborn. In moments of quiet, when the external distractions fade to a dull murmur, I can hear the voice in my own head asking to wake up, pleading with someone to listen.
posted by allium cepa at 3:52 AM on November 19, 2017 [5 favorites]

That was such an amazing read.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:02 AM on November 19, 2017

Thank you. Somehow heartening, despite the despair.
posted by allthinky at 8:51 AM on November 19, 2017

In the "gig economy", you are a brain in a tip jar
posted by thelonius at 9:33 AM on November 19, 2017 [2 favorites]