Are we there yet?

My son is going to visit his grandparents in a couple of days.  He’ll spend a week with them doing some fantastic kid-friendly stuff, and I’m really excited for him and for them.  My own feelings about his going on vacation, however, are a little harder to describe.

See, on the one hand, there is the very simple feeling of choirs of angels singing:

Halle-freakin-lujah!!!!

Time to myself?  DAYS of it?  With no kids knocking at the door?  No hourly chorus of MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM?  No whining about the meal choices or having to shower or having to clean up toys (okay, I might still whine about that one - sorry, dear!) or complaints about brushing his teeth or that I’m working too much or that he wants me to go outside with him in the 900-degree weather and ride bikes?  Two whole days that I will get to spend with my husband with our clothes maybe mostly off, climbing out of bed when *we* need food, going out to a restaurant and NOT ordering chicken nuggets assoonasyoucangetthemtothetableplease, swearing whenever I want?  ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?  Where the hell do I sign up!?!?

Also on that hand, I will finally get some work done, have a moment’s peace to figure out what I’m going to do about this 2 job situation, be able to spend more than 1 hour in my office at a time so that my remodel can progress further if not near completion, go through my closet and make room for the pile of clothes that I need to hang up but can’t wedge in there at the moment, and spend at least 5 whole days without a dining room table completely covered by Legos.  I’m so psyched about all those things that I don’t think I can adequately express it, choir of angels or no!

So yeah, that’s the one hand.

On the other hand, I know what you’re expecting:  the pathetic mom whose baby is going to be away from her bosom (yeah, I said it) and won’t be able to function.  Well, yeah, I admit that I will greatly miss kissing him good night, smelling him after the shower I forced him to take, and the giant hugs he’s been giving recently, though I think those are coming from a place of knowing that he’s leaving for a little while — a subconscious miracle for my child.  Having him away from my reach is always difficult for me, and after a traumatic start to school, it was several solid months (and I’m being conservative) after we found the perfect school for him before I stopped worrying about every second he was at school.  In the case of a child completely devoid of social skill, it comes with the territory, and sadly, that one grows worse as he ages instead of better.  That’s another blog entirely, though it does play a part in my anxiety now because I worry about how he will function there and what his grandparents will not catch on to quickly enough or at all because they haven’t seen him in months and aren’t used to his “way.”  I reconcile myself on that one, though, knowing that different experiences like that have historically brought him more into the world, so I always have more hope than fear when he goes off for an adventure like this.  I will definitely miss him, but knowing that he is having fun and most likely growing in experience will help that immensely.

No, the other hand is the simple fact that there is a change occurring in my daily life.  It never ceases to amaze me that the more I learn about ADD and how it works within me, the more I realize that things I always thought about myself are true and not so true at the same time.  For example, I am spontaneous, often in the form of impulsive; I never used to think that I was impulsive, just that I knew what I wanted.  While I still agree with the assessment that I try to logic out my wants and, once I have, can be, um, committed to what I want, I understand now that is driven by a total lack of patience (read:impulsivity).  I want what I want when I want it (damn it), and waiting for it just seems stupid if another option is available.  It’s not so much about being spoiled or having no self-discipline (thought I freely admit that I fall squarely under that heading more often than I would like), it’s really just more of a, “Well, why the hell not???”  Anyway, the point is that for someone who can be spontaneous to the point that I think I hold a record for making the most number of people shoot beverages out of their nose in one day, I reeeeally don’t cope well with changes to my daily routine.

The irony, of course, is that I don’t have much of a daily routine.  My husband used to have such a morning routine that I wouldn’t get up in the morning until he was out the door because fucking up his routine by being in the bathroom when he was supposed to be brushing his teeth wasn’t worth the big freaked out grouch he’d be.  Me?  Yeah, that is NOT me.  I’m much more of a mosey-er.  I get up, say good morning to the kid, take the dog out, eat my breakfast, help the kid get ready for school, the boys leave, and I’m on my own to do my own thing.  I might work, I might watch Good Morning America, I might go back to sleep, I might play a video game and go back to sleep at the same time (those are some weird dreams, people).  But, I knew that from the moment they walked out the door until the moment I had to walk out the door in the afternoon to go pick up the kid, that time was my own.  That was my routine.  Been outta school damn near a month now, and I still don’t have one down for the summer.  I don’t function well if I don’t feel settled into something, and I’m definitely still not settled (very hard to settle with your only child around all the time - at least for me).  And what little bit of settling I’ve managed is about to come undone because he’s not going to be here.  I just don’t do this kind of change.

So, with vacation looming, I am listless and restless and many other things that end in -less.  I find myself wishing it was already over and he was back.  I find myself thinking that it will be over far too soon and I will be back to days of almost no moments entirely to myself.  I find myself afraid of not accomplishing anything that I hope to and also worrying that I will (because, ya know, THEN what?).  I find myself wishing that school would hurry up and start again so that I would feel settled and could get something done.  Then I find myself wishing that school would never start again because I hate the craziness of the school year schedule, especially in the fall.

Yeah, I’m nuts.  But hey, at least I get to sleep in and watch an R-rated movie during the day next week. 

Should I stay or Should I go: What would you want your child to do?

As my other half said at Laura’s blog*, the happiest couples are the ones who have worked through the crap together and come out the other side. 

(*If you’ve not read the “Our Story” at Snerkology, I highly encourage you to do so!  Laura writes beautifully and has a very special insight that I love to read.  This is a multi-post story, and I link you to the latest installment at this time because she links all the others there.  I don’t usually directly refer to situations in another blog like I will be here without spelling them out, but there’s too much!  I refer directly to part 6.  Go, read.  Or, skip over those here if you must!)

At my parents’ anniversary party not long ago, a friend of my mother’s who is about my age looked at a picture of my husband and I and said, “See, I LOVE that picture because it is so obvious that you two are in love and really cherish each other.”  I laughed and said, “Yeah, well, that’s the after picture: We’d spent the entire year before that deciding whether we should get divorced and working through YEARS of crap that we’d been ignoring, so at that point, we really were in love with each other again!”  She thanked me profusely for letting her know that ‘look’ isn’t just some magical thing that falls out of the sky because she’d been going through a lot with her husband recently too and the work was so challenging; it was nice for her to know that we had made it out the other side, not just alive but better for it.

Second, and very importantly, I hope that in retrospect, it is obvious to Calvin that the dissolution of his marriage is the best thing that could have happened to his children.  I am the product of a home that is (long pause here while I tried to figure out how to word this adequately) shattered like a mirror.  My parents stayed together, and their relationship is, to this day, like a shattered mirror for me - constantly stabbing and cutting at me with sharp edges and tiny pieces of glass that get stuck in my skin and burn.  I am the only child of people who cannot stand each other, and I have had a whole lot of counseling to understand that I am not a product of hatred and animosity just because, like their relationship, I am made up of both of them.  Their relationship still pains me to the point that I moved a few states away in part to get the hell away from its poisoning effect, I almost can’t handle visiting them, and it is very close to agonizing at times to have them visit us because of the way their hostility infects the peace of my own home.

Because they both use me against the other, solicit my support in their battle, and then also blame me as well, I do not and cannot trust them - and have not done so from a very young age.   There is a whole of story that follows that for me, and I’m sure that some of it will show up here in the future, but suffice to say that I understand Michael and Marie’s trauma in the early divorce at not being able to trust their mother to protect them, love them, and not hurt them.  I simply cannot imagine what happened in her mind to hurt her children in that way; there is no hurt that justifies that.  I’m not saying that a parent can’t snap - we are still human, but when you find yourself in that situation, you REMOVE yourself from it as quickly as possible.  But then, I guess, I have the experience of having been the child.

When I was a child, my mother chose to stay in the marriage because of who I might end up being exposed to as family if they divorced because my father had known affairs with, we’ll say, women who would be less than suitable in the stepmother department.  On that level, I totally understand and can certainly respect her decision (I know these people now).  BUT, I was obviously also seriously damaged by their relationship in other ways that have taken me years to get over, so I can’t say that at least once I got older, it was still the right decision to make.  And now that I have my own child who visits them too, I have become more assertive with them in order to look out for him - realizing that demanding some restraint from them was the best thing I could do for myself and, therefore, for my son.

The point is this:  Our kids learn from us.  By watching their parents, children learn what they should accept from another person in a relationship.  They learn when to bow down and when to stand up.  They learn how they will define love, respect, and partnership.  They learn about self-respect and how to define boundaries.  They learn when to stick it out and when to let go and how to go about making those decisions.  They learn about self-preservation and being true to who you are.  And they learn all of these incorrectly if that is all they ever see. 

Never do to yourself what you would never do to your child because they will learn it from you and do it to themselves.

Calvin ultimately did right by his children by that standard, and I sincerely hope that he knows that. 

If there is anyone else out there reading this who is in a similar situation in a bad relationship, please think long and hard about what you are teaching your child by how you are treating yourself and/or allowing yourself to be treated.  I’m not advocating leaving or staying, but know that what you’re doing is what you’re teaching your children to do for themselves.  It should be an important part of your decision.

 

Bzzzt. Thanks for playing!

As I headed off to my annual gyn appointment the other day, my darling husband looked me straight in the eye and said, in all seriousness, I shit you not:

Have fun, babe.

Fun…?  Have FUN???  Did you just tell me to have fun?????…?

Well, um, yeah, I guess I did.  I don’t know - What was I supposed to say?

I don’t know, but of all the options in the pool, have fun couldn’t possibly have been the best one!

 

Blathering: Bad days, counseling, and paralysis

WARNING:  This post could be a trigger.  If you have ADD, please think about your current situation and how your day is going and whether you might want to read this now or put it off.   I’m not here to toxic up your life, so while there could be useful information here for you, there’s always another day to read it too.  Just give it some thought.

If you have ADD and are having a bad day, I hope you’re in a place that you can avoid the downward spiral.  If you read this, please use it to take comfort in knowing that you really aren’t alone.  There ARE other people out there who understand how hard things are for you, and there are people who survive it every day.  Hang in there.  The pit is not bottomless.

———————————————————————————–

Blathering is my term for a post that probably meanders all over the neighborhood before (hopefully, but I offer no guarantee) coming to a point.  Odds are good that I have a lot of posts that should be qualified as Blathering, but those actually in the category are ones that (a) are generally long as hell and (b) felt they were ending up scattered or disjointed as I wrote them.

———————————————————————————– 

ya know it ain’t easy
for these thoughts here to leave me
…
I’m tellin’ you
these feelings won’t go away
they been knockin’ me Sideways
…
I keep thinkin’ in a moment that
time will take them away

It’s funny.  It took me 25 years to go see someone (furthered by a moron who thought his brand of ‘love’ should be enough to ‘cure’ me - what an ass) and to be open to antidepressant medication (to which the psychiatrist said, “Wait a minute.  You’ve had this level of PTSD and depression almost all your life and have never taken anything?  You have lived in America all of that time, right?  My God, how has no one helped you until now.”).  The reason it took me so long?  I had the usual fears of becoming a zombie, side effects, being mind-fucked by someone who didn’t know what they were doing, etc.  But the truth, which I can see now, is that I was deathly afraid - not of hoping that someone could actually help me but of being told there was no hope.

When I started seeing my current counselor, a woman who specializes in eating disorders with a subspecialty in ADD, I was a walking catastrophe.  It was a miracle that I was even there, after having had one previous wretched counseling experience.  I remember sitting in her office, looking down to my knees where my hands were wringing the life out of tissues drenched with tears, as she told me that things really could get better and that from what I had told her she truly believed she could help me.  My God, that moment.  If I spend much time thinking about it, the vivid memory floods in with the smells, the warmth of my clothing, the softness of the tissue in my hand, and her gentle touch on my shoulder - so honest and reassuring.  How I wanted to believe her, but as I told her, it had been so long.  I’d tried so much.  I’d believed so often.  I just couldn’t let myself hope anymore.  She promised me that I was there because the hope really was inside me, but it was okay that I couldn’t feel it right now.  She asked if she could hold the hope for me.  What a concept that was.  That someone else, someone who said they understood what I was saying, would choose to believe in me, to hope for me — and offer herself to me to trust her to be the one who carried the hope.  It’s been more than 3 years, and I’m still blown away by that.

I understand now that she was right, of course.  I was there, and continue to go, because I have hope.  My hopes have changed, thankfully.  Whereas I started my journey hoping for a miracle that would bestow ‘normalcy’ and ‘happiness’ (because, really, who doesn’t?), I now hope only for the chance to be my best self and to find joy in all the spaces of my life, with both goals being met while finding a way to work with my ADD instead of against it.

I used to think of myself as a cynic.  My life has been full of beautiful and devastating irony at every turn, so it isn’t a stretch to see how I’d think that; I learned to expect the worst.  It turns out, though, that I am an optimist in practice because I always still hope for the very best.  Actually, I always still hope beyond the very best; I’m working on reining that in a bit, but I’ll admit it is tough because, when it pays off, it’s stellar.  :)  In truth, I’m an optimist to the point of ridiculous sometimes.  I think we should all just be nice to each other.  I believe that peace is possible if everyone would just stop thinking it is so damn important to be ‘right.’  I put up stockings at Christmas for the adults in the house, and I expect them to have something in them on Christmas morning.  I believe that life should be magical past the age of 8, and I cannot fathom why someone wouldn’t want it to be.

Hope is to optimism as faith is to trust.  Unfortunately, I still have a problem with faith/trust, one that is pervasive in almost all areas of my life, not just my ADD.  I can’t tell you what it was that made me trust my counselor; I certainly believe the hope in me played a huge part:  I wanted to trust her, I needed to trust her.  Ultimately, I knew things wouldn’t work if I didn’t, so maybe I just made the decision.  I doubt that it is that simple, and it certainly doesn’t give her credit for being the amazing person that she is.  Maybe I should ask her about that one.  I’d be interested to hear what she had to say.

But, back to faith and trust.  I am agnostic.  It doesn’t mean I don’t believe in God.  It means that I don’t trust the accounts I’ve been given.  I’m much more neutral than that (remember that thing about not needing to right?).  If God exists, it goes too much against my nature that he would be as spiteful as some believe or as generous as others believe.  I don’t think God ‘lets’ people get fatal diseases or ‘cures’ them because of prayer.  It doesn’t mean I don’t pray in times of crisis or fear, but that’s my way of expressing my hope.  If it goes somewhere or does some good, then great, but that’s not why I do it.  If God exists, who am I to ask for favors?  And why would my favor be more deserving than someone else’s?  No, there’s no justice in that, and I’m not about to request injustice.

Of course, that said, I also express gratitude ‘to God’ for nice things that happen in my life, just because I want to deliver my gratitude into the world.  I feel grateful for all living things I come across (all right, maybe not poison ivy or cockroaches…), and I think that taking my time to enjoy them shows my gratitude to the world.  I certainly look at my son and am nothing short of amazed and awed.  You also can count on a “Thank you, God” when I get a great parking space.  

Some days, though, it is terribly difficult for me to have faith that my life will continue to improve.  On the bad days, I feel incapable - of anything:  change, action, joy, communication, work, living.  On the bad days, the paralysis can set in, and I feel like nothing but a lump of cells that refuse to remember to live.  That’s actually a good description because the paralysis feels like a betrayal - a trap set by my body to bind me and keep me prisoner, a maze with no way out.  My rational mind knows that there is a way, a door, an exit that I cannot see.  It is often something that appears absurdly simple after the fact, but if you’ve ever squinted harder in an effort to see in the dark, you know that it’s merely wasted effort.  There’s a ‘trick’ to it, and you have to know what it is.  Have you ever driven in dense fog?  Can’t see a thing.  Lights on.  Fog lights on.  Windshield wipers going.  Defrost blowing like mad to keep the window clear.  You’re leaning up over the steering wheel and have a deathgrip on it, all in an effort to see just one more inch of the road.  You’ve driven this road for the last 5 years; you know it well.  But WHERE is that curve?  Is it now?  Haven’t you been driving this road for 20 minutes?  It should have been here by now.  It will be any second.  Are those lights ahead?  Are they in your lane??!  What are you going to do?!?!

If you don’t know to keep your low beams on and look down at the stripes on the road, the panic sets in, and your body becomes almost immobile behind the wheel, preparing for the fight it cannot see.  Exhausting itself by doing virtually nothing except being overwhelmed with possibility.  That is very similar to the paralysis of ADD, and in that moment, faith is very difficult to see.

The  most unfortunate part of that moment is that this is where the snowball meets the mountain, and the cycle begins.  As the ADD’er becomes paralyzed by overwhelm, too many decisions to make, fear, and too much hope, sections of their life start to slide:  work commitments, family commitments, the house, the bills, the car, the dog, the cat, school, appointments, nutrition, exercise, sleep - all the things that make a productive life.  As that slippage grows, support fades.  Coworkers start to wonder.  Family members become exasperated.  Needed nutrition, activity, sleep, counseling, and medication all become very shaky and dwindle.  The support systems that need to be in place cannot be maintained in paralysis, which only furthers the paralysis.  This is further complicated because ADD paralysis, in my experience, makes me feel toxic and not want to be around others.  I don’t feel like I can be helped, certainly not by people who, by my standards, have all the reason in the world to feel irritated, angry, or upset with me, and being around those people will only add to the depths of my pit.  In the past, this was cured by running away from my problems and the people around me.  While this can seem reasonably effective in the short run, I’m here to assure you that it only leaves piles of your own emotional baggage that you have to clean up later, even if you never see the other people again to have to deal with the piles you left for them.  Since I’m now married and have a child, a mortgage, and life insurance, that’s just not an option.  So what do I do?

I’m in one of those spaces now.  My beloved husband, a very good man in general and sometimes saint for his attempts at learning to learning how to deal with my ADD and still love me (and not give into the occasional urge to strangle me) (*I have to caveat that he has plenty of his own pain-in-the-ass-itudes that I have dealt with so we’re not talking canonization here, but his were more in the past and we’re currently talking about mine.  This statement brought to you by a ‘not viewing myself as beneath my partner because of my ADD’ need.), ….yeah where the hell was I…  Oh, my husband is feeling very fed the hell up with me right now.  A feeling I don’t begrudge him.  I don’t enjoy it by any means, but I recognize that he has more than a leg to stand on.  The school year has just ended, the kid is home for the summer, work has gone nuts in not good ways, the deck is thoroughly trashed (see his Memorial Day blog), and every single room in our house (I wish I was kidding) is, well, wrecked.  For all the energy that spring can give me, since having a kid, summer can sap it back out with a vengeance.  We are into the paralysis cycle up there, and motivation is damned hard to come by for me right now - for anything.

Back to the question of what to do:  I’ve had a few solid days of this crap now, so I’m hoping that I’m on an upswing.  I don’t adjust well to changes in my ‘routine’ (imagine my shock at learning that I had one…), and there has been A LOT of change in the last week.  During all of the insanity of the last couple of weeks, my meds have been completely screwed up, I’ve not eaten right, and I’ve not gotten enough sleep.   I’ve had to cancel counseling appointments 3 weeks in a row.  I’ve certainly gotten almost no daily exercise or enriching activity on my own, and if I don’t make sure to do something that actually rewards/renews my spirit in virtually every single day, things go bad quickly.  SO, I need a plan. 

It started a few days ago with putting one foot in front of the other and going to get my meds out of the cabinet at the times I need to take them.

• I’ve already started being religious about my meds for the last couple of days, and I can feel the difference.  I also already scheduled some medical appointments I’ve needed to make for a while.
• I’m going to change my schedule at work to say that I will be working on only certain days of the week.  I will then at least know that I have very specific days that I will be free of that. 
• I’m going to sit down with my son and create a list of chores we complete on certain days.  We’ve talked about it, and it’s time to do it.
• Tomorrow, at some point, I’m supposed to be meeting with someone about watching my kid a couple mornings per week so that I at least have some quiet time, even if I’m working, where I don’t feel like I need to be immediately responsible for his well being and/or guilty if I’m working.
• I’m going to make sure we eat dinner together as a family tonight - hopefully at a table free of Legos.  (God help me.)

Sleep, nutrition, and activity need to be addressed, and soon, but that’s a list of 5 for right now.  I know myself well enough not to go beyond that as I’m starting out.  It doesn’t take much for it to get completely out of control, and then the snowball starts rolling again when I’ve expected too much, too fast.  I’d rather have a list of 3 to 5 successes, however small, then a list of 10 successes and 10 things I put on my list but couldn’t get done.

One day at a time.

 

FYI:  For anyone who hasn’t been able to start on the journey, I’m begging you:  Find help.  And if you’ve tried help, and it didn’t work, please find a way to try again.  Counseling and medication saved my life.  I’m still learning how to live, but I’m here to tell you that knowing your weakness doesn’t make you weak; it gives you the strength to live your own way.  You are not alone, and no one goes to battle by themselves and wins.  I am holding hope for you - because I know firsthand that your life can be better.

Doin’ whatever a Spider can

Thanks to my husband. Don’t we make a cute couple?

(I took a few liberties with the assigned gender, thankyouverymuch…)

Do I have some fantastic anti-gravity boobs, or what?!?

Your results:
You are Spiderwoman
You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky, and have great power and responsibility.

Spiderwoman 85% Wonder Woman 72% Superman 65% The Flash 65% Supergirl 62% Robin 62% Catwoman 55% Iron Man 55% Batman 50% Green Lantern 50% Hulk 45%

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Gimme a dimebag of PROJECTS

My son is headed out for a week’s vacation at Grandma & Grandpa’s house, which happens to be 3 states away. His other grandparents live a mere 2 states away (don’t be fooled - both are 600 miles), but in the opposite direction. Yes, you read that correctly and if you go ahead and make the inference, you’ll be correct again: We live 600 miles from our nearest family member.

We did it ‘by choice’ - if ‘by choice’ you mean because my husband was pretty much doomed to a layoff at work and was having a hell of a time finding another job locally. (Now I know why so many people major in ‘business’…it’s apparently much better to have no idea what you want to do with your life than to field a passion for a particular field - who knew.) Our marriage was also drowning in acid at the time, for assorted reasons, though our location was related to several on the list.

So yeah, it was our choice.

Of course, at the time, we didn’t know that our son was on the spectrum. Had we known, I’m not sure how it would have changed things, but since it has factored in virtually every other decision since we got a clue, I have to imagine that knowledge would have had an impact. Though it might have made me scream and wail a lot more about leaving family that could help us (my husband thinks, “MORE???”), I can at least hope that my more intelligent nature could have kicked in and used that information to look for early intervention services in the major metropolitan area in which we now live.

Yes, that would have been handy information to have, indeed.

Instead, we moved, the acid boiled over and left us scarred and bleeding for a long time, and we spent a couple more years in as near-complete denial as we could manage of the fact that we were living on the spectrum, and a large part of that willful denial had to do with being completely, utterly, absolutely on our own with our son.

…except for a few weeks a year, when he goes to visit his grandparents. And since he has started school, those trips are significantly shorter, fewer, and farther between.

One the glorious me-isms is that when one of those vacations is approaching, my mind begins to project-cise at warp-speed.

All those times we’ve said, “We’ll have to do that when he’s not home”? He’s about to not be home.

The list starts flying by in my head. The excitement begins to build. Projects whizzing by my eyes: paint his room! rearrange his furniture! fix that window! move the office downstairs! set up my scrapbook area! scrapbook! move the bedroom back into the bedroom! then make the old bedroom into … whatever we’re making it into!! ….

Yeah, just downshift there, Mr. Sulu.

It’s 5 days, not 5 weeks - and the way I function? I’ll be pretty happy if I have all that stuff done in 5 months. (That’s not self-deprecating either, I really will!)

So, through the benefit of my ADD therapy, reading, and medication, I’m grabbing the emergency brake with both hands. While my mind is still grabbing like the project-addicted junkie that it is at the thought of all the things I could start AND NEVER FINISH, I am choosing _ONE_ thing to which I will dedicate myself while he is away.

…
….
…..

What?? He doesn’t leave until tomorrow.

I know you didn’t think I’d already PICKED.