...I'm not generally one to sit and complain for long. Oh I bitch and I moan, but I usually pull myself up pretty quickly and roll forward.
I am finding it harder and harder to do so without literally slipping into grrrrrr-land lately. I'll move past this. I'll get over it. But I have to say, I'm a little overwhelmed at just how shitty this entire semester has been.
And if one more person in my life says "You just need to..." or "You're too busy, you need to cut back!" I'm going to fucking punch someone. Why? Because the entire past year of my life has been ALL ABOUT CUTTING BACK. All about trying new ways of living. All about assessing my values and letting them lead me to better decisions. All about CUTTING BACK. The problem is, I had a few decisions that I made that were longer term, that I was just going to have to ride out.
Ex: you don't just quit grad school when you're already 2/3 of the way through because you're making lifestyle changes. You identify it as something that needs to be completed and not returned to, once it naturally expires from your life.
Here I am as an adult with ADHD and even I can see this...but I have "normal" people up my ass telling me that I'm doing too much...of course if I QUIT these things before their natural expiration date, those same people would say "oh, look...she's impulsive, she has ADHD and she doesn't know how to stick with things or make good decisions". Which couldn't be further from the truth for me. But I can't win here. And to be clear there ARE other things I have cut out, but of course because I cut those out, or said no to them in the first place, nobody knows they ever existed :)
This issue is extremely ripe right now for me, because I spent the evening in the emergency room a couple of days ago because I nearly passed out twice at my office...after being sick for the previous 12 days...during all of this, I'm trying to finish grad school. As in, if I don't finish the work I have right now, I do not graduate. I'm not going to belabor the details of the past year+ except to say that due to those details, I have sort of used up my academic get out of jail free cards. And yet I'm here with periodic vertigo, and respiratory illness that won't go away...oh...and bone-deep fatigue and woozy thinking-abilities.
I'm starting to wonder where my limit really is. But I'm not going to pretend that this isn't sort of eating my soul, making me kind of angry...all that good stuff. I just don't usually hold onto this feeling. I can usually let it go. But I think it's these kinds of prolongued periods of bullshit luck that would make anyone go a little stir-angry.
Oh I'm not feeling particularly persecuted or "why me". I'm just exhausted and sick of it. There's a big difference.
But while I'm going through this last little bit, I'm seriously going to be avoiding a few dear people in my life...who I love...but who need to STFU right now and quit telling me what I need to do.
I am finding it harder and harder to do so without literally slipping into grrrrrr-land lately. I'll move past this. I'll get over it. But I have to say, I'm a little overwhelmed at just how shitty this entire semester has been.
And if one more person in my life says "You just need to..." or "You're too busy, you need to cut back!" I'm going to fucking punch someone. Why? Because the entire past year of my life has been ALL ABOUT CUTTING BACK. All about trying new ways of living. All about assessing my values and letting them lead me to better decisions. All about CUTTING BACK. The problem is, I had a few decisions that I made that were longer term, that I was just going to have to ride out.
Ex: you don't just quit grad school when you're already 2/3 of the way through because you're making lifestyle changes. You identify it as something that needs to be completed and not returned to, once it naturally expires from your life.
Here I am as an adult with ADHD and even I can see this...but I have "normal" people up my ass telling me that I'm doing too much...of course if I QUIT these things before their natural expiration date, those same people would say "oh, look...she's impulsive, she has ADHD and she doesn't know how to stick with things or make good decisions". Which couldn't be further from the truth for me. But I can't win here. And to be clear there ARE other things I have cut out, but of course because I cut those out, or said no to them in the first place, nobody knows they ever existed :)
This issue is extremely ripe right now for me, because I spent the evening in the emergency room a couple of days ago because I nearly passed out twice at my office...after being sick for the previous 12 days...during all of this, I'm trying to finish grad school. As in, if I don't finish the work I have right now, I do not graduate. I'm not going to belabor the details of the past year+ except to say that due to those details, I have sort of used up my academic get out of jail free cards. And yet I'm here with periodic vertigo, and respiratory illness that won't go away...oh...and bone-deep fatigue and woozy thinking-abilities.
I'm starting to wonder where my limit really is. But I'm not going to pretend that this isn't sort of eating my soul, making me kind of angry...all that good stuff. I just don't usually hold onto this feeling. I can usually let it go. But I think it's these kinds of prolongued periods of bullshit luck that would make anyone go a little stir-angry.
Oh I'm not feeling particularly persecuted or "why me". I'm just exhausted and sick of it. There's a big difference.
But while I'm going through this last little bit, I'm seriously going to be avoiding a few dear people in my life...who I love...but who need to STFU right now and quit telling me what I need to do.
Your posts are awesome - I really like reading them. I like the STFU idea, I think I'll roll that into my bag o' tricks.
ReplyDeleteCheers and good luck,
Mungo
Thanks Mungo...
ReplyDeleteS-ing TFU is ALWAYS a good plan, more people should practice it more often! That way, we wouldn't have to ask them to do so...!
I always try to time my vacation and health days with my "cycles" of stress (real-world, not a euphemism for another disorder).
ReplyDeleteI find that certain times of the year (like RIGHT NOW!) are always worse than others.
My only problem is that between graduating from school last year and my two kids, I had less control over vacation and sick days than I would like.
A proactive day now may prevent a melt-down later.
Especially with grad-school, the first month of the semester is usually, "I can handle this..." or worse a lack of adequate stimulation for the ADD mind. Of course, the first part is always the easy part.
OOOOOH. That's a really great concept...cycles of stress. There are definitely things that trigger extreme stress for me, that are a bit predictable. I feel like medication has helped me to deal more effectively with the surprises in life, with the less predictable stress triggers...the predictable ones are still stressful though.
ReplyDeleteFor example...with school, I LOVE the beginning of my semester, and I know that I have a total meltdown at the middle of every semester so I do a lot of really good planning and pre-planning for the middle of the semester, at the beginning, when I am still engaged and still have the focus to attack it.
In a way then, I guess this is my way of acknowledging my own academic stress cycle and being proactive. I still have the meltdown, I just have less to do in the middle of it.
I also melt down at the end of the semester. Finals stress everyone out, but they really piss me off. Fortunately I'm DONE WITH THEM FOREVER! MOOHAHAHAHAHAHA!
I'm going to think about that concept though, stress cycles in my non-academic life. I may actually notice a pattern if I start to pay attention :)
Thanks for the awesome new vocabulary!