A Beautiful Mind

I may only be 20 now, and I know it's a long way before my brain starts degenerating beyond my control, but I can't help to think "Won't that be a really petrifying situation to be in?". As with old age, people start to forget things, events, memories and even their loved ones. But what would it be like to forget how to bath yourself, to cloth yourself, to feed yourself; the very basic things that you have done all your life?

I remember watching Love, Sex and Other Drugs and the male protagonist met another guy, whose partner too has Alzheimer and the former asked the latter whether he still loved his wife. The answer was startling to me. He said "Run when you still can. Everything you'd loved about her would disappear." When two people commit to matrimony, they vowed to "love each other in sickness...", but how can one promise to continue to love and care "till death do us apart" when she knows that she will lose her mind, bit by bit, everyday and eventually forget who he is and the life they had together?

Or when one has a talent so extraordinary, that once his mind starts to degenerates, he begins to be obsessed with the reality that he would not be able to produce another work as spectacular as the one that made him famous. I remember how when i first read David Auburn's Proof, the pathetic fallacy in the winter scene nearly made me cried. The cold winter was a reflection of the great mathematician's disintegrating brain and the dramatic irony of his eventual death. Just last night, I was watching 90210, and Marla, a great actress of her time, chose to commit suicide because she could no longer perform as she forgets why she is on stage.

Imagine if you have control over your mind all your life, and one day it just starts slipping away from you, how would you deal with it?