Michael Larson
English 98/99
Mrs. Connolly
Who am I? I miss myself! (328) Words spoken by a woman who just week before knew who she was and where her life was going. For Alice Howland in the book Still Alice by Lisa Genova that has been the most difficult thing she has had to face throughout her whole life. For the past 25 years she has dedicated so much of her time and energy to present herself in a certain way, one of prestige and academic success. Now Alice is faced with the questions of who am I? Where am I? Questions that would penetrate her very being throughout the rest of her days. Alice Howland is a cognitive psychologist at Harvard University, she is a woman who specializes in language and the very mechanisms that make it work. Alice is often so confident when she gives her speeches that she rarely even has to look at the notes she has right there in front of her. But this day is going to be different, very different, this is going to be the day that alters her life in a way that will shake her to her very core of her existence. As Alice stands in front of a room full of people the strangest thing happens, the words, there lost she can for the life of her remember the words she has spoken so many times before. She goes on to play it off as if it were jet lag or even that she may have had one drink too many. Deep down though Alice knows something is wrong very wrong the word she tries to speak seems to be dangling right in front of her but for some reason just will not come out. Nothing has to be scarier for Alice than when she went for a jog, a jog to a place she has visited for more than 25 years, is now faced with the question; where am I? She stands in the spot she’s been too so many times before only to be lost. She tries to walk but can’t she stands there frozen with fear knowing that this is a place that once was so familiar to her was now as if she had never been there before. (25) The noises that surrounded had caused her to cover her ears, she couldn’t take it she told them to go away. At this point Alice had started to feel as if she was losing her mind. The life she once had held so close to her has now turned completely upside down and the struggle just to keep her sanity and her identity has begun to be ripped away from her a little at a time. The fight for her life has truly begun as she later finds out that she has the early stage of Alzheimer’s disease. Alice being educated like she was, knows the outcome of this disease knows that there would be no positive end to it. As she first tried to relate it to menopause or just getting old, has