What's the Word?

I’m noticing lately that I lose words mid-sentence.

I will be rolling along and then WHANG! there’s an open space where the word should be but isn’t.

When it first started I’d flail like someone who’s lost their glasses in the dark. I’d see myself on my hands and knees crawling the floor of my mind feeling around: I put that damn thing somewhere but where. Shit. Where is it?

Occasionally, in a panicked desperation to fill the air, I’d use it before realizing it was the wrong one.

Sometimes I feel it as it is happening — the way you do when you force a puzzle piece into a place where it does not fit. But more often than not I find myself on the other side of the sound of the word and know that is it wrong. The sharp light of judgement from others only makes this awareness more awkwardly painful, harder to pull back from.

Oh, god, now where am I going? Should I follow it or just keep hemming and hawing until I get the right one? Or should I pretend it’s the right one and see where it takes me?

It can be subtle, a quick detour in a moment anyone might take as a normal pause. And when the words do re-appear right where I left them so my flail looks more like a strain for accuracy than outright gap, the swift recovery can make me wonder if recent work on my self-awareness has created the noticing of a problem I’d always had.

But it’s been happening enough now that there’s no doubt I’m kidding myself with that thought. Plus, my memory of words is sharp and sure. I’d never had trouble making it through the monkey bars of thoughts and conversation. My ideas and responses were synonymous with my language choices, as seamless and smooth to touch as a satin skin.

These days, I can feel listeners leaning forward trying to figure out if they can help while I search. They’ll offer answers in darts and when I’m lucky they are right. Real embarrassment blossoms though when they are not and I have to say, No, that’s not it and either move on in an incomplete state or push on with the search.

Some chalk it up to lack of sleep. Surely that could be it.

But it’s been happening enough that I ask myself if something deeper has changed.

(And I wonder if others ask the same.)

That’s when the darkest fear creeps in under the door — beyond the chaos of a world without language. Is this the noticing of the slow decline? The first signs of the unpeeling that happens to us all?

It’s mixed with loss, too. The loss of all things words have led me to and the potential to lead me to more.

(Oh, words, you have brought me so many things. Ideas and plans. Surprises and sweetness. Love and friends. Forgiveness and change. You have brought me theatre and poetry. You have brought me into the great minds of others. You have let me share my thoughts and helped me feel less alone in this skin. You have led me to a woman who I’ve built a life with. You’ve helped me manage tears and navigate friendships. You brought a career and a living. You have gotten me in trouble and save my life. You have crystallized moments and helped define who I am. The prayers I’ve made with you have been answered in ways I can’t use you to express.)

When I am really down, I worry it will lead to silence. Not the kind of silence that is a choice that brings clarity and peace and makes every word count more — a silence that is a word itself. But the other, a silence that smells like a coffin that you are buried alive in.

And all this now comes to me in the space that comes when WHANG! I reach out and there is nothing…