This is just fan-freaking-tastic. Apparently before I started treatment, my significant other did not always feel comfortable telling me what he was really thinking sometimes about some of my less charming ADHD symptoms. The monologuing, for example, "The MEMEME Show"--sweet Jesus that's gotta be annoying. And the BIG reactions. And it's no wonder...would you want to tell someone that their BIG reactions make you uncomfortable when you were worried that their reaction might be, well, a little BIG? He also just plain worried about hurting my feelings.
Now...now that the medication has taken the edge off of many of my reactions and behaviors...now he's saying things about me that actually seem a little out of date. "It's always the YOUYOUYOU show!". I can't say he is inaccurate, just that he would have been more accurate a couple of months ago. So as I was trying to sort out this disconnect I asked "But I feel like I'm changing a lot, don't you think I seem a little bit better? a little bit less intense? a little bit less chatty? like I'm listening better most of the time?". To which he said yes...then "I'm sorry...I think I was so uncomfortable talking to you about it before, that now that you're less intense I feel like I can actually say these things to you and you won't have a HUGE reaction".
Ka-thunk. Sigh.
To be clear...I sought diagnosis and treatment of whatever "this" was with his support, but at my own insistence. He did not push me in this direction, he did not incessantly complain about my less graceful behaviors, he did not tell me I was an awful person, he didn't even tell me he thought there was something "wrong" with me that I should have treated. He apparently enjoyed the up sides and silently suffered the downsides in relative silence. Which makes me feel really awful.
It's quite a pickle. On the one hand, I have these annoying things that I do. On the other hand I am aware that I do them, and I feel badly about it. But in the moment they happen anyway. I am compelled to think out loud, and 45 minutes later I stop to breathe and notice that someone else is in the room. I promise that I'll do the dishes then find myself on a 3 hour research odyssey for a book that I should write someday. My mind grabs onto something upsetting with the lockjaw of a pitbull and can't let go until the prey stops wiggling. Meanwhile, back at the Batcave, I should have been working on my homework. While I'm in it, the logic, if there is any just then, points to the necessity of my continuing to do whatever ridiculous shit it is that I'm doing.
I truly wish that without medication I could just stop. But I guess that's what brought me to this point...to being 33 years old and finally saying "Help!". I tried addressing hypoglycemia, I realized that my stimulation-seeking was destroying my life, I systematically attempted to remove gratuitous chaos from my life. And still...I was me. And in the end that's what you're left with, yourself, and the knowledge that after all the variables are removed, there's nobody and nothing else to blame but what may exist within you. What existed within me was an ever so slight chemical imbalance in my brain that wreaks utter havoc on the people that I love.
Sigh. Ka-thunk. (<-------Sound of a heavy heart.)
Now...now that the medication has taken the edge off of many of my reactions and behaviors...now he's saying things about me that actually seem a little out of date. "It's always the YOUYOUYOU show!". I can't say he is inaccurate, just that he would have been more accurate a couple of months ago. So as I was trying to sort out this disconnect I asked "But I feel like I'm changing a lot, don't you think I seem a little bit better? a little bit less intense? a little bit less chatty? like I'm listening better most of the time?". To which he said yes...then "I'm sorry...I think I was so uncomfortable talking to you about it before, that now that you're less intense I feel like I can actually say these things to you and you won't have a HUGE reaction".
Ka-thunk. Sigh.
To be clear...I sought diagnosis and treatment of whatever "this" was with his support, but at my own insistence. He did not push me in this direction, he did not incessantly complain about my less graceful behaviors, he did not tell me I was an awful person, he didn't even tell me he thought there was something "wrong" with me that I should have treated. He apparently enjoyed the up sides and silently suffered the downsides in relative silence. Which makes me feel really awful.
It's quite a pickle. On the one hand, I have these annoying things that I do. On the other hand I am aware that I do them, and I feel badly about it. But in the moment they happen anyway. I am compelled to think out loud, and 45 minutes later I stop to breathe and notice that someone else is in the room. I promise that I'll do the dishes then find myself on a 3 hour research odyssey for a book that I should write someday. My mind grabs onto something upsetting with the lockjaw of a pitbull and can't let go until the prey stops wiggling. Meanwhile, back at the Batcave, I should have been working on my homework. While I'm in it, the logic, if there is any just then, points to the necessity of my continuing to do whatever ridiculous shit it is that I'm doing.
I truly wish that without medication I could just stop. But I guess that's what brought me to this point...to being 33 years old and finally saying "Help!". I tried addressing hypoglycemia, I realized that my stimulation-seeking was destroying my life, I systematically attempted to remove gratuitous chaos from my life. And still...I was me. And in the end that's what you're left with, yourself, and the knowledge that after all the variables are removed, there's nobody and nothing else to blame but what may exist within you. What existed within me was an ever so slight chemical imbalance in my brain that wreaks utter havoc on the people that I love.
Sigh. Ka-thunk. (<-------Sound of a heavy heart.)
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