Writing resolutions early...

...I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but I have some resolutions I'd like to make for 2011. If any of this is at all, truly and reasonably within my control, I would like 2011 to look something like this:

No new projects.
No changes of residence.
$$$
No big surprises that won't make me smile.

Tossing those pleas out into the universe and praying for good results. It's like tucking the crust around the top of a pie, popping it in the oven, and then hoping that I remember to take it out of the oven.

Tough Love Time. Rawhide tough. Grrrrrr.

Dear fellow ADHDers. It's tough love time. Anything I'm about to write is as much a conversation I am willing to have (and have had) with myself, as it is an imparting of words to you:

If you have ADHD it is your responsibility to work for accountability in your daily life, to yourself and to others.

If you have ADHD, it is YOUR responsibility to work for understanding of YOUR ADHD and how it affects you, impacts your life, and affects the people around you.

It is NOT your responsibility to be perfect.

But it IS your responsibility to try. Not to talk about how you are going to try, but to really try.

It is your responsibility to figure out how to be on time when you really need to be.

It is your responsibility to figure out how to remember to do the things that you tell others you will do.

It is your responsibility to remember that the feelings of others are important and deserve care.

But it is also important to stand up for and express your own feelings, and defend your positive coping strategies, even if other people think they are weird, so long as they are not negatively affecting others.

It is YOUR job to figure out which study skills will best help you with your education.

It is YOUR job to do what you say you will do, or learn to set limits and learn to say no.

If you don't know how to help yourself, it is your job to seek other sources or people who can help you to help yourself.

It is YOUR job to meet the deadlines that you have accepted responsibility for.

It is YOUR job to own your decisions, and own your choices.

It is YOUR job to work toward your goals in whatever ways you are reasonably able to, and to learn to set reasonable goals for yourself to work toward.

It is NOT the job of your mother, your father, your family, your children, your teachers, your professors, your caretakers, your friends, your colleagues, your boss, your dog, your lover, your landlord, the utility company, the bank, or your employees to make your life awesome...or to accept blame when you can't accept it yourself.

Blaming others will not cure your ADHD.

Nothing will cure your ADHD.

So get to work.

This morning I went to a meeting...

...and I didn't sit in my chair at all. What a great meeting! The kind where you are supposed to give verbal input, don't have to sit through speeches or ramblings, and you can go right up to the front and add or subtract ideas from the visuals.

Nice. More please.

Alright fine...

...you can have your little shit donut game, Universe. I'm not even thinking about what you may be up to anymore, because after waking up to a black hole of depression and disinterest today, AGAIN, not even my methylphenidate XR could boost my spirits, although it did provoke my corpse to rise, at least.

Something different happened today though...I rose, and then I decided I couldn't stand another morning like this.

I'm not even tempted by your shit donuts right now because I'm officially on to another plan. I took a little time to really think about the parts of my life that I love right now, and those that I don't. And then I threw a few fishing lures out there into the universe, HARD, in about 20 different but similar directions, to hopefully help to address the ones that I don't. I also entertained some alternatives...ones that in the past would have indeed, shone ahead of me like a glazed, lemon-filled mirage. Meh...don't want them, don't need them. This is a sign of progress. I shall proceed with focus prized over novelty.

I'll try it again tomorrow, too. Ha.

A dozen shit-filled donuts...

Life feels like a baker's dozen of shit-filled donuts right now. I get excited as I open the box and take one out...I stick it in my mouth...and discover that it's not lemon, or Boston Kreme...it's the shit-filled kind.

I've run into so many shit-filled donuts this year that I almost can't stand to make a decision or try anything new because I'm afraid of the shit filling and I just don't have the stamina to cope with shit filling right now. So I'm stuck. I'm depressed. I fear the very novelty I crave.

I have actually made a lot of positive choices to remove the excess chaos and novelty from my life, but where is the balance? And why, when I try new things, does life keep sending me the evil donuts.

I don't know. I can't control it. That much I'm resigned to. I just hate spending days feeling resigned.

Oh hold on now...shit donut revelation: I'm feeling anxious about making decisions about what to do next. When I was busy living by the seat of my pants and blowing around with the wind, I didn't have to make decisions. The shit-donuts are a mere distraction...they are real, but they are a distraction. And all I keep thinking about is the shit donuts.

Hmmmm.

On why I write this blog...

I started this blog purely for personal reference. I wanted to chronicle my ADHD treatment journey so that if I needed to, I could go back and see my progress, or re-look at things that worked and didn't work. Obviously I decided to take it public...and there were a variety of reasons for that as well.

One of them being the fact that in our country, there are a lot of ingrained, accepted, and ignorantly dispersed stereotypes about mental health issues and the people who have them. EVERY family runs into these issues at some point. No, I don't have a source for that "fact" but I'm fairly confident...now wait a minute, here's some handy stats, do what you will with them, from the National Institute of Mental Health. All about the prevalence of various mental health issues. According to their presented information, about one in four American adults experiences a diagnosable mental health issue within a given year. And if you don't believe me OR them, well, then you can probably stop reading this blog right now, because it's based on the premise that mental health issues are a part of daily life for all Americans, even the ones who choose to believe that "crazy" people are someone else's problem.

People running around acting like a conversation about mental health issues is "for other people" is the number one thing that needs to change.

The second? People who work in health care have a responsibility to treat mental health patients with respect.

I have previously chronicled the experience I had at my local hospital, where I felt that my temporary disability in the throes of what turned out to be a migraine disorder was completely dismissed because in my chart it said "anxiety disorder". I have a long history with anxiety and the management of what I know to be anxiety symptoms. Ignorance on the part of the health professionals who were dismissing me, led to my being temporarily disabled for two months. I had to drive (chaffeurred, since I could not drive myself) into the big city, find some "real" doctors without prejudice blinders on, and get adequately tested and treated, for a very treatable condition that bore no relation to my existing anxiety symptoms.

Gee, I didn't mean to get into that again...it's just that I get so frustrated thinking about it. The reason I bring this up again, is that my grandmother just had a similar experience at the same hospital.

Let's clear up a few things about my grammy. She's over 90 years old. She experiences a moderate amount of dementia. However, she was visiting the hospital for a non-mental health-related, and VERY obvious physical issue. There was nothing unreasonable about her seeking treatment for this very obvious physical issue, one which left untreated or improperly treated, could become very serious in any elderly person. My mother was standing behind two nurses who commented to one another, not realizing that she was listening that "this was CLEARLY going to be a 'mental health' issue". My mother gathered that what was intended by that sarcastic and unkind comment was that either they did not find her issue worthy of care, or they were simply inconvenienced by her dementia...an issue that if they had any heart or sensitivity training, they should be able to deal with just fine.

Again, my family chose to jump ship. They were essentially told that until this extremely elderly but otherwise healthy woman was in a life-threatened state, she was not worth treating.

We took her "to the big city" and got confirmation that not only was her situation worth treating, because she is a PERSON, but there was also no need to compromise the health of an otherwise healthy elderly woman with incorrect treatment (of the kind the previous hospital's staff were insisting be done in the meantime) or by ignoring her condition and allowing it to worsen.

Even a person with a serious mental illness can tell you when something hurts. Even people with mental health issues can express opinions and observations about their health care. These issues do not make them less human, or less worth treating.

In my age group and general peer group, I am not someone who would generally be marginalized due to "mental health" issues. I have the luxury of passing for normal. I also have the delightful luxury of hearing ignorant comments come out of people's mouths because they don't know that I'm "one of them". My grandmother does not have that luxury. Millions of Americans every day don't have that luxury. After a long, healthy, productive life, my grandmother does not deserve to die from a treatable condition because of other people's ignorance. And during my recent illness, I found myself on that side of the fence too, thanks to a note in my medical chart...temporarily disabled at the age of 34 because the ignorance of my local medical providers decided that my life was not worth improving...BECAUSE they wrote me off as an "anxiety case".

I took your ativan and it didn't help me, because I wasn't having an anxiety problem. I went to a real hospital and they helped me get better. We took my grandmother to a real hospital to help HER get better. And unless I'm bleeding out of my eyeballs, I'll never go back to your hospital again.

Now that I'm better, and now that I'm seeing this happening again...you bet your ass I'm going to keep writing about my everyday experiences as a person with mental health issues, who also happens to be a person, and a person who works really hard for positive changes in their community. That this ignorance I write about comes from the medical community makes it even more disgusting and worth addressing.

But I LIKE constant novelty...at least I USED to...

...so a year and a half-ish ago, I started making different kinds of decisions in my life. Many of those decisions revolved around my identified need to stop bringing constant novelty into my life.

I see that some of those decisions have had positive effects...but I can't honestly say that I'm happy in the wake of making others. I am accustomed to bringing plans to natural conclusions when the novelty wears off. I am accustomed to following the winds where they lead and having magical adventures result, for better and worse.

So for the last few weeks, I start every week with a sense of dread. Because everything looks the same. Because I am choosing to stall all of those WILD ideas in my head that usually propel me into action. Because now that I have the calm I sought, I am struggling to keep myself from tossing some new herbs and spices into the mix to shake things up. I should clarify that, having gotten to a point in life where I don't want chaos, it's pretty easy for me to NOT choose it at this point...however...there's got to be a more interesting alternative. Monday is usually the worst...Tuesday, the drama continues...for some reason, by Wednesday I feel kinda okay...maybe because the week is half over? As the week comes to a close things look rosier...but then, Monday comes "every Monday morning comes", and I lay there my bed, depressed. Angry. Struggling to get out of bed or get my brain excited about wherever it is that I'm going for the day.

New kinds of decisions and plans take time to develop, and in a crappy economy it's harder to get many types of projects off the ground. I review seemingly appropriate alternatives...and I simply don't want any of them.

This is not a "post-wedding" boredom issue. (Living and breathing with Sonny is really one of the only aspects of life I'm enjoying right now. Even when we're doing "boring" stuff.) It's more like a "holy shit, all that stressful stuff is off of my plate and I STILL hate my life right now" issue. And I don't see an end in sight, mostly because, as I said, there don't seem to be any alternatives that fit the right criteria.

I no longer enjoy the provocation of constant novelty...but I can't stand the stasis of this routine either. It's just too much.