I feel imprisoned by my new brain. I feel like Charley Gordon in the second half of the book "Flowers for Algernon", where Charley's genius starts to diminish and his mental capabilities decline to his previous retarded self. Okay, I wasn't really a genius, and I am not heading towards retardation, but my mental abilities have diminished greatly. It's really frustrating to have to deal with these limitations because I know I used to be a lot more capable; instead of dreaming of becoming a professor or lawyer, I have to set my sights lower and relegate myself to less mentally taxing occupations such as delivering pizzas or being a Wal-Mart greeter.

I'm really self-conscious about my mental slip-ups and how people perceive me. I myself get frustrated with inarticulate word mushers, and I myself have become an inarticulate word musher. I really want to understand the works of great philosophers such as Kierkegaard and Aristotle, but my brain will only allow me to have a very shallow understanding of such works of complexity. I have a great hunger for knowledge and understanding complex ideas, but the incredible effort involved to even have a loose grasp of such complex ideas leaves me frustrated. I feel like a starving person who has access to abundant food but suffers from sever diarrhea; no matter how much information I eat, a lot of it just goes through my brain without getting processed.

I feel stuck. I envy those who are brilliant. I admire intelligence and creative thinking, but I know I will never come close to achieving the mental abilities I once had. I feel lesser-than around smart people, and I often feel lesser-than so-called average people.