So I screwed up today.

It goes like this : at around 1:30 pm, I got a call from my therapist asking if I had forgotten that my usual 12:45 pm appointment was Wednesday, aka today, this week and not the usual Thursday/

Obviously. the answer was yes. I had completely spaced on that highly salient fact. I remembered as recently as Sunday, but after that, completely forgot. Was not even on my radar whatsoever.

And as one might expect, I was acutely embarrassed. I apologized to the doctor and, sensing weakness, he got me to agree to come in fifteen minutes early next week.

I would have agreed to come in via a flock of tightly coordinated carrier pigeons at that moment. My face must have been bright red.

Now I bring this up not only to re-humiliate myself in the vain hope that I will learn something from this incident, but because it has direct bearing on something I wanted to talk about in this space anyhow.

Namely, executive function and the consequences of its impairment by depression.

I even posted to Facebook about it last night :

I just realized – pathfinding, aka finding your way from A to B, is an executive function skill.

In fact, it is the definition of an executive function skill. The definition of executive function is “the ability to concieve and execute a series of steps in order to achieve a goal. “

Sounds like pathfinding to me.

So those of us with our executive function impaired by mental illness naturally may have trouble finding our way around.

No wonder I get lost so much!

My facebook feed, last night

Pasting that in because not only is it directly relevant to the topic at hand, it saves me from having to define executive function again.

Depression severely interferes with and degrades executive function. My off the cuff theory as to why is that the mental numbing painkiller that the mind secretes an excess of due to unhealed mental trauma gums up the works all through the brain, it’s just most noticeable when it comes to the higher brain functions like executive function.

My person theories aside, the fact that depression messes with executive function is scientifically well established. And the theoretical definition of it is easy enough to grasp. We all perform executive function tasks every day.

Even something a simple as catching a bus or making a meal requires executing a series of steps to achieve a goal.

And those are the exact kinds of things someone with impaired executive function like myself finds most difficult. It’s not too bad when it is routine tasks because then the subroutine are already written, so to speak, and just need to be executed.

But novel situations are quite another kettle of fish. That is when I get overwhelmed so easily. Simple situations that normal folk wouldn’t even think of as a thing leave me flummoxed and flustered and totally confused.

It’s hard to convey just what that’s like. The best I can come up with is that it feels like something in my mind is overheating and breaking down. Like the wires in my head that control that kind of thing get overloaded and melt into useless goo.

And if, as is likely, I happen to also be having a panic attack at the time, then proper mentation stands no chance. Panic means adrenaline and the adrenalized mind tends to dump its contents frequently in order to leave as much space open for dealing with whatever the threat or danger is as possible.

Of course, in the modern world, it’s often something way less obvious than a flash flood or a hungry sabretoothed tiger.

So between panic and my usual mental haze, I don’t stand much of a chance of being able to sort things out by myself. The best that I can hope for is to find someplace quiet where I can relax and wait until I am calm enough to make sense of things.

Hence, like I said above, my tendency to get lost. I do my best to obtain as solid and foolproof a set of directions as possible to my destination before I set foot out the door. In this modern era, good directions are easily found.

With a bit of work, I could have directions all the way from here to Abu Dhabi and back within an hour.

But there is always some kind of hidden ambiguity that I am unable to resolve with my impaired executive function.

Is this the road I have written down here? Because it seems like it goes in the wrong direction entirely. So should I follow the instructions or my wonky sense of direction? Both seem equally likely to end with me lost and frustrated and panicking and hating myself for being such a goddamned boob that I don’t even know where I am any more, let alone how to get back on track to where I am going.

Oh, and I am now officially late for whatever I was trying to get to. Great, that will definitely help me calm down and think sensibly. Just think of how I will feel when I show up super late and it’s my own damn fault!

That would be about the time I get the urge to go home and forget the whole thing.

Home is good. Home is wonderful. In fact, home seems like heaven to me right now. I never get lost at home!

But of course, to do so would be extraordinarily irresponsible of me, and thus not an option. I would at the very least need to be able to contact the people who are waiting for me and tell them to go on without me.

And if I could do that, I could probably get someone to come pick me up.

And that is just one little slice of how hard it is to be me sometimes, and a glimpse into why I stay at home most of the time.

And I haven’t even touched on how asking for directions escalates the panic.

Sigh. I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.