I feel like I’m going brain dead. I’m pretty sure my IQ has dropped by more than a couple digits. I just can’t process things anymore. I can’t follow complex thoughts and ideas like I used to. Slowly, even simple things are becoming a task to understand. Whether it be understanding what people say in conversation, following a podcast or reading a couple of lines from a book, everything to do with processing information has become unbelievably difficult. I either take a very long time or can’t understand at all. Metaphors are particularly hard to connect and understand. I also don’t find anything funny anymore. Even when I do understand the intent behind a joke, I can’t find it in myself to take pleasure in it and laugh. Everything I do now seems to be out of habit or instinct. I still laugh occasionally at something that would be considered funny but it seems to me that I only do it because I’ve been used to doing it for all my life, which is a pretty long time to establish a solid habit. Another example would be I’d read a piece of poetry that I used to like or a new piece of poetry that I feel I would have liked before all this, feel a tinge of something, what I suspect to also be the cause of a well-established habit and then it would immediately go away. I’m scared of what will happen after the habits have faded away completely. I used to be a big fan of the arts. I’d be able to find it in my heart to appreciate even the most awful creations from any medium (books, poetry, movies etc) as well as understand and enjoy daunting literature for my age but now it’s all gone. It feels like a chunk of my brain has shut down. When it first started, I was convinced it was a temporary thing and that it would go away on its own... But it's been going on for more than a month now. I’m 16, by the way. Way too young to be going through cognitive impairment… Right? Could this have to do with mental illness?