Friday, June 5, 2009

Who the Eff Packed This Box!?!?!

It seems to be a well documented fact that adults with ADHD have piles...of stuff. Well I had boxes and they have followed me for years. And now I'm unpacking them, I'm looking in one and all I can say is "WHO THE EFF PACKED THIS DAMN THING! IT'S FULL OF CRAZY SHIT!". Ugh, why did I save this crap. I mean, I know why, it was because I couldn't slow my brain down long enough to friggin' figure out a better solution but gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

This is hell. Hell is 15 minutes alone with your own baggage. Literally. Here I am. And only 10 boxes to go. Better set the timer for 10 minutes to deter the hyperfocus demon, because if I hyperfocus on organizing this crap, I'm gonna have more than ADHD making me nuts, lol...

NOW you tell me

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taken the edge off of many of my reactions and behaviors...now he's saying things about me that actually seem a little out of date.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.)

Sunday, May 31, 2009

Peeking through...

...just when I was beginning to think "this is just me learning to be organized, this medication isn't doing anything for me" suddenly the medication stopped working. How do I know? I was suddenly aware that the old familiar feeling of overdrive was back. The pacing, the not sitting, the thinking-thinking-thinking and the irrational aversion to simple tasks that the logical mind knows are not difficult.

And after a couple weeks comprised of mostly relative "quiet" in the brain, this was jarring.

See, it's a good trick. The medication doesn't alter my personality. It doesn't take away my creative ideas and thoughts. It makes them behave more politely, and ask before interrupting my train of thought. They "poof" into my mind instead of exploding. The rubber band between the new thought and the space station (my brain) is allowed to slacken at times, rather than being constantly stretched by lack of gravity. You get the idea. (And please forgive the terrible metaphor. I'll blame the ADHD part of my brain for that one.) Because the medication does not make me feel "not like me" I thought it wasn't doing anything. I thought "oh, look at me, I'm just so organized, I must be that amazing that will-power just kicked my behavior issues in the ass, even though that hadn't happened in the 33 years prior to my taking the medication".

This isn't to say that I don't have stellar coping skills, or that my cleverness hadn't helped me work my way around all manner of deadlines and obligations over the years. But it was hard work to make it happen...harder work than it should have been all this time. The medication makes it possible to just BE organized instead of fight to appear that way. It takes some of the struggle out of staying on task. It creates an actual thought process rewarded by results where before there was mapless inspiration buoyed by anxiety (and often followed with an "OH SHIT! I HAVE TO TURN THIS IN TOMORROW!" and a last minute miracle).

The medication doesn't make me perfect, or make my thought processes perfect, but it takes the edge off, and lets me be me in a more reasonable time frame and with less anxiety. How can it be so subtle and change my life so much at the same time? I guess for me, it really points out the difference between me and my symptoms. ADHD is part of me, part of my brain's functioning, part of who I am. But it is a set of symptoms, it is not the core of me, it is not my personality. And the medication seems to let me see more of my personality without the obstruction of the symptoms. Lets me enjoy the upsides of ADHD, but helps to keep some of the more frustrating ones at bay.

So I'm grateful for the "peeking through" that allowed me to appreciate the subtle charms of my medication. As a result, we upped the dosage on the meds a little and voila...life feels just a little more manageable.