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.

 

It’s the Thought that Counts

Talk about an ADD mantra…

You know, I keep a list in my Drafts folder of the gazillion things I want to talk about here, the extra pages that I want to create, etc., with, of course, the very best intentions of eventually getting them completed.  I’m all for the “You’ve Gotta Have Goals” thing, but you hope that you manage to reach one every now and then. 

So, in the interest of “Meeting One Every Now and Then,” I’m going to attempt to try to kinda sorta dedicate myself to working on the ol’ blog for a while on Friday mornings.   Seriously, I can’t get more noncommittal than that. 

All right, I could, but I’m trying not to…

 

Frick

I’m going to state that ridiculously obvious here:  I am not a patient person.  Or as I usually say:  Patience is a virtue - one I don’t have.

And truly, my impatience is in everything.  If I buy a something as a gift for someone, not giving it to them until the appointed date and/or time is just about enough to make me pack my own bags for the funny farm; I can’t stand it.  I have an idea in my head for how this room could look better?  It is scant moments until I have my tape measure in hand.  There have been several times that, had the power been out when he got there, my husband would have come home and tripped over the couch being where the walkway USED to be.  Even in conversation, I’m a GET ON WITH IT ALREADY(!!)(!) kind of girl, as my scholarly (read: windbag) husband will attest.  (You can feel sorry for both of us there; we’ve both earned it.)

I’ve been more than a little aggravated with my workplace lately.  I am lucky in that I truly like a lot of the people that I work with; however, the BS is getting old in what my grandparents called a quick, fast hurry.  Hand-in-hand with my impatience is my need to fully understand what is expected of me.  I want training.  I want to understand my job, my duties, my software, and the tools I am expected to use.  I want to understand the rules of the company and the client, and I want to be able to recite them backward and forward in a way that someone else can understand (which, by the way, is part of my job).  The reason I want all of that is so that I can function as a highly-trained, intelligent individual within the organization.  It is the reason that I am self-employed, working as a subcontractor and paying my own #$%^(*! taxes at a higher rate than sane people.  When I am not given this type of information, even after repeatedly asking for it and even fostering ways to make it easier for it to be provided to me (and other in my position), I am left to wonder why.  This isn’t my first go-round in this type of position, and I have never been denied this type of information before.  Based on other communications, policies, etc., I am left with two overwhelming impressions:  Information and training are not being provided because (1) the director doesn’t know what he’s doing in this field and does not recognize how different it is than others and (2) the director wants to micromanage.

The more I think about all of this, the more clear it becomes to me that this isn’t something that is apt to change any time soon.  It appears that it has been this way for quite some time and that, barring a supreme act of nature, it’s gonna stay that way.  This means that I suddenly find myself in a itchin’ hurry to get the hell outta Dodge.

Which brings me back to patience, and that lack thereof.

I have a resume waiting at another company right now.  They’re swamped with new clients and needing help, and their ad came across my desk at the right moment.  It’s a company I’ve considered several times over the last few years, but the timing was never right.  I think I have a very good shot at contracting with them, and from all I’ve heard, it sounds like it could be an excellent fit for me.  Of course, there is still that ‘grass is always greener’ thing, but I’m optimistic because someone I have a lot of respect for couldn’t find a single negative thing to say after having been there for more than a year.

It’s been a week.  The ants in my pants are getting antsy.  And with every e-mail from the current company that gives one more tidbit of information that directly contradicts something said previously or gives a shred of new information that should/could have been shared in the training that should have happened when I or any of the lackeys below me were hired, the ants give birth to more ants.  And they’re all pissed.

Frick.  I hate waiting.

 

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.

One of the subtle joys of ADD

Ow.  Oof.  Yikes!  SH!T!!!   These are the sounds of me walking through the house, cooking, moving furniture, carrying anything for that matter, or basically, um, breathing.

Yes, world, I am here to admit to my shame:  I … am a clutz.  It’s true.  My soul has an almost ethereal natural grace about it.  My body?  Not so much.

I have actually read and been told that being clutzy can be a part of ADD.  No one has really offerred an explanation for it, so I’ll surmise that we’re not quite as aware of what is surrounding us/going on around us/where our bodies fit into it all.  Sure, I can go with that.

The running joke in our house used to be:  “I’m going to make dinner.”  “Okay, I’m sorry you burned yourself.”  Because it was GOING to happen.  No matter what.  Now imagine that I worked in the restaurant business for about 4 years, 3 of them near a 600-degree oven.  How I’m not scarred like my entire body survived a 4-alarm fire, I have no idea because I earned it.  Have you ever reached over and grabbed a probably 475-500-degree pan with your bare hands?  I have.  I’m here to tell you that it smarts.

Actually, the bumps, bruises, injuries, burns, etc., where I make the most noise aren’t usually the ones where I am the most injured.  It’s when you hear a sharp intake of breath and then a quiet voice calling out words that you can’t actually hear, that’s when there could be an ER involved.  The pan?  I didn’t even do that; the only sound was the pan dropping on the table, the collective stunned silence of the people around me as they watched in horror, and my footsteps walking as fast as I could to the back so that I could immediately immerse my hand in vat full of ice.

Today, however, has been one significant THUD after another.  I have:  BASHED the very edge of my elbow into the sharp edge of the closet door (a solid 5 minutes with my head between my knees trying not to lose my lunch), SMACKED 3 toes into the corner on the leg of our rolling dining room chair, and CRASHED into a huge amplifier that is in the normal walking path in our basement.  By the by, that’s the second time I’ve done that this week.  Thankfully, the most recent one was on my thigh instead of my shin.  Not because it hurts less than the other did but because at least I didn’t hit the same already traumatized spot.

Can you get long-term disability checks because you’re a danger to yourself when you MOVE?

Pavlov’s dog did not have Asperger’s

Well, first I have to say that I hate the new admin page formats, currently with the heat of a supernova.  I’m sure I’ll move past it at some point.  Maybe.  I think my favorite part so far has to be that the posting box got (yet again) smaller while the font size for the blog title, etc., can be seen from my neighbor’s house.  wtf, mate??  And what’s with the barf-tastic color scheme of light blue on… light blue?  Bah.

On with our regularly scheduled program…

 

I’m down here right now instead of upstairs eating dinner with my family.  Yeah, I feel like a total putz for that, but sometimes, the only thing I can do is remove myself from the situation - often because I know that my angst is palpable and will only make things worse when the kid in the mix grasps no one else’s feelings almost ever, with the one exception being when someone has angst - because of him.  Now, mind you, that’s not empathy or sympathy coming out, and it isn’t that it’s the only feeling he can read.  No, it is because if I have angst because of him, it directly affects his ability to do whatever the hell he wants.  Yes, often in the Aspie world, if you can’t figure out why a child is acting the way they are, you need to re-center and remind yourself that their world is 100% about themselves and, therefore, about how THEY get to interact with the world, not about how the world interacts with them.  Resort to the simplest question of, “Is there a way that he could be making this entirely about himself?” and you’ll almost always find your answer.

I have ADD, and one facet of that for many people, myself included, is the need for praise/reward for behavior.  If I do something nice, I need to hear that I did.  Some people would call it being self-centered.  Some would call it having low self-esteem.  I’ll grant you a component of both, frankly, but truly, it’s because that is how *I* interact with the world.  Praise/Reward creates energy in someone with ADD; it’s a snowball effect.  And, truly, it’s usually pretty pathetic how little praise/reward it takes to have that snowball rolling down the hill like a freakin’ meteor in the direction you want it to go.

Explains A LOT about my years as a teenage girl and the barge-load of mistakes I’ve made with boys/men all my life.

As we all tend to reflect what we want, ADD’ers also tend to give a lot of praise/reward, sometimes to the point that we can seem overbearing, stifling, or flat-out crazy.  To us, our words of praise or encouragement mean the world, but I imagine they often mostly just bounce off others as fairly insignificant comments or, at best, leave only a fleeting impression.  We are the quintessential example of “a smile can make someone’s day.”  Truly, a kind word and a smile from someone as I hold the door for them coming out of the gas station can absolutely turn my day around 180 degrees.

The point is that I had imagined that my child would be like me (don’t we all).  I’m sure every parent is disappointed in many respects when it comes to that fantasy; Junior has no interest in football and doesn’t care about your favorite car, and Janie would rather drive a forklift than take ballet and refuses to even consider the flute.  As the ADD parent of an Aspie child, the person I want to make happy more than anything else in the world couldn’t care less about my wants, my efforts, or my good intentions brought about by my love for him.  My drive to see him happy means absolutely nothing to him, even when I am successful, and in the end, it is my innermost being that feels it has been resolutely rejected.  It is crushing, in the worst of ways.

While I try to take comfort in a partial silver lining that, on some level, he doesn’t suffer from a need to please others or put their wants above his own, I know that is built not of confidence but deficiency.  I can see the edges where that frays with his peers and know that the time is coming where those things will start to, if not matter to him then become a source of terrible frustration and angst of his own.  And, somehow, I will have to find a way to help him through it and teach him how to deal with it, on his terms, and hopefully before it molds him into an angry young man.  Yes, I will have to teach him how to understand people like me.

And so it is that I am here with my hurt, by the lamp light, tears streaming down my face, because I cannot yet even imagine when or where I will find the strength for that challenge.  I just have to believe that I will.

World Autism Awareness Day

Today is World Autism Awareness Day.

 …in case you live in a bubble without internet, television, or radio access and haven’t already heard. 

Of course, I say that, but yet I’m irritated to hell and back that Google didn’t alter its homepage image today in recognition.  ???  Because there was never a logo that begged more for a puzzle piece, so how does that work?

The concept of this day (and really, week) is great, and more power to everyone involved in raising awareness throughout the world.  Incidentally, I hope we’re raising awareness about more than nonverbal autism; I know that CNN has a wonderful article written by an Aspergian someone on their staff.  I also hope we’re doing more than bitching about vaccines and raving about gluten-free diets.  Yes, those are important issues, but they aren’t the only issues. 

Have you noticed that anything talking about Autism Awareness seems to end up being the same few things over and over again?  If you’re a parent of an autistic child, I assure you, you’ve noticed.  Currently the winners are: 

• A list of early warning signs.
• Jenny McCarthy talking about her son’s amazing recovery with a GFCF diet (among other things - and hallelujah to her, but not all kids have GI symptoms, people, including mine).
• Snippets of debates over vaccines and other possible causes. 

Things I don’t see anyone talking about:

• School with communication and socialization curricula. 
• High-functioning kids who still aren’t going to be able to make it in the world if they aren’t able to get some adaptive therapies - that their parents can’t possibly pay for. 
• The fact that, in most states, the public school system is not even close to adequately equipped to deal with the needs of these children but that yet it is still a bloody war that is left to the parents to fight alone to try to get proper services for their child, often either failing or paying such a high cost emotionally, mentally, and financially by the time they see any measure of success that the mere act of trying to facilitate their child’s education—one small part of the child’s needs—can destroy their lives, relationships, and family.
• And oddly, am I the only person on the planet who thinks someone should start talking to the ‘normal’ rest of the world about how to deal with people with deficits in communication and social skills?  Maybe it’s time that someone ELSE adjust besides just the people who are already in the fight of their lives?  Just, ya know, maybe.

CNN has dedicated a huge amount of their day’s programming to autism, which is fantastic, truly.  It would be even more fantastic if it hadn’t inspired someone to call me repeatedly to tell me that it was on and that I should watch it.  I’m pretty sure it would be deemed incredibly rude of me to reply, “In case you hadn’t noticed?  I’m Aware.  With a capital A.  YOU watch it.  Call your friends and tell THEM to watch it.  Please, scream it from the highest rooftop.  But me?  I’m covered.”

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go spend some time with my autistic son, whose programming is dedicated to raising my Awareness 24/7/365.

My dog knows.

It’s a sad and sorry truth that my dog knows that I have ADD. 

Not because those years of woof—>English lessons paid off, mind you.  No, every time I get into the shower, the dog slumps down into a completely depressed pile of fur and watches the door like a hawk.  Why?  Because she knows that when I get into the shower, the odds are 90% that I’m leaving as soon as I get out and leaving her here by herself.

Procrastination.  If my dog can tell, I guess I really wasn’t fooling my teachers in high school, huh? 

Sin by Association*(5)

I’m a Gmail user.  I was a fairly early Gmail user, having been invited by a much bigger nerd friend who was a really early Gmail user.  Since becoming a Gmail user, I’ve been really happy with the service, though I think their organizational system sucks.  I’m all for outdoing anything Microsoft, believe me (*nyeeet, nerrrt, vyyyrrrt, vrrraaat…..Bill Gates is the devil….nyeeet, nerrrt), but they missed the mark on that starring crap and having to label every message that meets the inbox.  I’ve felt that I could announce my association with Gmail in a positive light and promote their service.

Right up until yesterday, when Gmail made me a liar by association.

I’m not a saint.  I’ve lied about calls I’ve never made.  I’ve fibbed about what time I left the house or that I must have been outside when the phone rang.  Heck, what the hell, I may possibly (but not certainly) have even fudged the date on the postage machine a time or two (you can’t prove it!).  So, I can certainly understand the possible problem of not having forgotten to send an important e-mail to someone by a crucial deadline.

But seriously, the CustomTime feature that Gmail just added now brings every important e-mail sent by every Gmail user under suspicion.  Did he really send that when he said he did?  Did it really get caught in a server blackout on my end when there was a storm in my city or did he use the Gmail CustomTime feature to make me think he didn’t miss that deadline?

Unbelievable, Gmail.  You act like you’re trying to help your business clients by providing them the opportunity to whitewash, all while using your other hand to smear mud on the ones who weren’t stuffing $1 bills in some dancer’s G-string when they were supposed to be sending that quote to the client.

Do me a favor?  Don’t do me anymore favors unless you’re going to send a week’s worth of those $1 bills my way.

*That’s a record playing backwards, in case you didn’t know.
**Remember Mikey from the Life cereal commercial?  He’s dead.  Pop Rocks and Coke.  Haven’t you heard?
***Ozzy Osbourne has eaten a bat a day for the last 30 years.
****Paris Hilton is having Lindsay Lohan’s lovechild.  Pass it on.
*(5) Yes, I’m so lame that I can’t come up with my own April Fool’s and had to climb on Gmail’s.  But I had ya goin, didn’t I?