When we come back inside the house after taking a walk outside, she always immediately stops in her tracks and looks around cautiously as if there must be wolves hiding behind the couch. This is because it seems very dark to her inside because her pupils haven't adjusted yet. There is no explaining it to her. You can only turn on all the lights and tell her in a calm voice that it will not seem dark in a few minutes. This has been happening for a long time now and even though a year ago she was much more capable of understanding words, we could never convince her. You can think I'm an asshole but this makes me think of her as a dog. Because now she understands the tone of your voice but not your words. And when her senses tell her there is danger, you cannot argue with them. Her senses always win, even when they lie. She is like a dog hiding under the bed on New Year's eve, trembling because the world is ending. Call me an asshole, I don't care.
She gets spooked more and more. It can be something as logical as a creepy movie on TV or as bizarre as a Land's End Catalog. If I am lucky, she will pull it out and show it to me and say "that is really scary." That way I can throw it away and tell her everything is ok. We have to encourage her to go to the bathroom. She usually doesn't want to even if she hasn't peed all day. One day as I tried to gently push her into the bathroom, she pointed to a part of the wall where the paint had chipped away near the floor, saying that was really bad and creepy. We taped a piece of white paper over it and she exhaled and she thanked me. Once I came over when she had been alone and she was hiding from the TV in the kitchen because somebody was plotting to kill their mother in law on Days of Our Lives. I changed the channel. Her drawings and paintings are all over the house. There is one of a lizard on a dark red background hanging above the couch. One day she indicated that that was spooky too. I took down her own painting and she smiled at me and stroked my hair. She is always so relieved and thanks me in sort of an embarrassed way. She thanks me that same way when I help her zip her sweatshirt or tie her shoes. They are the moments when she realizes how vulnerable she is compared to us.
She hasn't been able to change the channel for over two years now and when she is alone during the day, she inevitably ends up watching daytime TV. But she still finds a way to mock the stupidity of Soap Operas. She does this with hand gestures and rolling her eyes. I know what it means because these are her old tricks and she has always hated Soap Operas. She used to advise me against them like she might advise against drugs. It was good advice.
