Memory loss

I think I’m going out of my mind. I can’t remember exactly when it started, but I do know I began acting a bit weird when I fell pregnant with my first child.

All these years later, I still haven’t recovered my sanity. The chemical reverberations of the mysterious ‘baby brain’ still make me do some pretty odd things. I’ll often make a cuppa and shuffle off to the sofa, only to discover I’m carrying the milk bottle, having left the hot tea in the fridge door.

Basically, I‘ve gone from pregnancy brain, through sleep-deprived haze, enjoyed a brief stay in toddler confusion and ended up in pre-menopausal senility. I’m over the fact I never really learnt to speak another language properly, as even words in English routinely fail me. ‘Put it in the... lid-opening rubbish thingy.’

My physiology has been altered in such a major way that I now fear I’ve been permanently damaged. I’m like that character Guy Pearce played in the film Memento. You know the one – he has short-term memory loss and tattoos key phrases over his body.

Like him, I make lists. My house is a shrine to sticky yellow notepads and yet, I still pack my kids off with their swimming kits when it’s PE, make the ‘forgotten spectacle dash’ to school at least twice a week and leave playdate friends in the playground, having driven off without them. Basically, my children are learning not to trust mum when it comes to anything these days, which is perhaps a good thing. At least they’re learning about independence.

Blind panic sets in at the supermarket if I’ve left my grocery list at home. Names are forgotten as soon as the introductions are over. And I once spent an entire evening consoling a very good friend whose mother was
extremely ill, and promptly forgot upon waking up the next morning exactly what the poor woman was suffering from.

Just recently, I drove to Abu Dhabi to see The Killers and left the tickets pinned to the fridge door. This did not go down well with my husband, who, having never suffered the joys of ‘baby brain dementia’, completely failed to see the funny side.

Personally, I blame the kids. I was perfectly normal before they messed with my mind. Now what were their names again? Does anyone know the number of a good tattooist?