HELLO! DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? DO YOU HEAR ME?

I know how my own brain works and how it feels. Sometimes I feel like certain people seem to think or act as if I'm less intelligent than I used to be or less intelligent than I actually am. I'm certainly not a genius, but I'm certainly not unintelligent. I have some word issues. I am not great at quickly and easily explaining some things. In some ways I'm different than I used to be, but doesn't that apply to most of us in different ways? I have some memory issues. I'm a rather slow reader and need to concentrate harder than I used to in order to initially process something and then not too long after that, I might forget certain things again. But just because my reading is slower and my processing takes longer and I have more memory issues than I used to, that doesn't mean that I don't understand things when I concentrate on reading them.

It also doesn't mean that I need someone else to repeatedly explain things to me as though I don't understand or to repeatedly talk over me or to tell me what to do as though I'll make the wrong choice if they don't or to indicate that I'm less than I used to be. Just because things take me longer and require more substantial effort and repeated concentration, that doesn't mean my brain is a broken down mess.

It means my brain is different.

My brain is still my own. Not worse. Not less than. Different.

In addition to the above (or perhaps somewhat interconnected with the above), I am feeling rather sad (and like I'm not getting enough accomplished in a timely manner, whatever that even means). I guess that's just the kind of day (month? year?) it is.

Somewhat related to my own slow process, on the plus side, one really positive thing about slow reading/processing is that I'm used to that and enjoy it (sometimes) because of poetry. Poetry has always been a preferred form of reading and writing for me and poetry is a form of writing that I have often chosen to read (and re-read) slowly in order to process (and interpret and interpret again in different ways) because that's how poetry works for me.  

Along those lines, I will say one thing that is causing me to feel a bit sad is this meme I've seen quite a few of my poetry friends sharing on social media that shows a burning world on fire and then underneath that image of a burning world, a silly comedic "poet" asking, "Do you need any poems?"

Quite a few people are commenting that they don't know whether to laugh or cry and I feel that way too, but it mostly makes me feel upset and like crying and like maybe nothing is very important; not even the things we really like and are strongly drawn to.

I think a lot of us poetry/art people already know that poetry is not hugely important to the mainstream. But regardless of that, I still think it is a very worthwhile and meaningful form of expression and connection and sharing. Even if it's relatively little on a larger scale, I don't think that makes it meaningless or silly. I think it is meaningful and important to a lot of different people for a lot of different reasons.