The article delves into the author's struggle with cognitive clarity amidst personal upheaval and societal chaos, particularly following transformative events like Donald Trump's inauguration and the COVID-19 pandemic. The writer describes vivid experiences of misreading words and feeling detached from both past and future, attributing these sensations to various factors including motherhood, health concerns, and the overwhelming presence of technology. This shared experience of cognitive fog seems increasingly relatable to many, suggesting a broader societal issue with engaging with reality and time.
I feel a troubling kind of opacity in my brain lately—as if reality were becoming illegible, as if language were a vessel with holes in the bottom and meaning was leaking all over the floor.
the fog never cleared after my third round of COVID. Maybe it's the self-severance of having two young children but pretending for half of the day that I don't.
At the root of this opacity might be whatever strange thing is currently happening with time. I mostly keep track of it on my phone, a device that makes me feel like I am strapped flat to the board of an unreal present.
More than a decade of complaining about this situation has done nothing to change my compulsion to induce dissociation anew each day.
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