Imagine that you are sitting in a room, alone. There is a chair, a table and a small lamp with a weak bulb. The room is small and the walls are made of frosted glass that lets in the light, but no clear images, save for a few clear panels spaced randomly. These clear windows are small and allow you to only see a tiny clear image of someone perhaps walking past outside…but quickly the image disappears before you have a chance to focus on it.
The room is not soundproof, but the walls are thick enough that they muffle the outside noise, so that unless someone stands close to the wall and shouts, you are not able to hear anything distinctly.
When you first enter the room, you can see well because there is a lot of light coming from the outside shining in. The light makes you feel less lonely, especially when you can see the outlines of people walking past outside, and you are able to recognize the faces that pass the clear windows.
But, as time goes on, the light from outside fades, and is replaced by the weak lamp in the room with you. Because of the light in the room, it becomes harder to see the shapes of people passing by outside, and the faces in the clear panes of glass become less noticeable, and pass by less and less frequently. Also, for some reason, fewer people speak loudly outside the walls, so that you hear less and less distinct sounds, just muffled echoes.
Soon, the light from outside fades almost completely and you are left sitting alone in a small pool of light, with only an occasional echo or shadow coming to you out of the growing darkness. Once in a great while, a face will hover at the window long enough for you to notice, but often the shadows make it hard to recognize who the face belongs to, and even if you call out, the face disappears before you can get an answer.
The darkness becomes deeper, until all that seems to remain is your chair, the table and the lamp sitting in a pool of weak light. You are scared, and lonely and uncertain, and distrusting of the darkness because you have forgotten that there were once walls that you could see out of.
Now, if sounds come to you, they are frightening because they have no meaning, no attachment to anything real. If a face suddenly swims in from the darkness it is startling and distorted by the odd shadows cast off by the dim lamplight, making the face seem only vaguely familiar…like a face from a dream that you once remember having.
This is how I imagine Alzheimer’s must feel.
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