Is this the eye of the storm...

...or the result of treatment? Or both?

I feel like it's way easier for me to juggle my life these days, for the most part. It's still busy, it's still wild...it's still creative, but there are moments where it feels REALLY busy, and then...moments and chunks of days where it just feels calm. Even when I'm busy.

WHAT'S UP WITH THAT!?

It just feels like less work to get certain things done. Less work to deal with ordinary details of life.

Like...and this is really bizarre, I've actually been keeping my clothes sort of organized and hanging up my coats...instead of leaving them where the cats climb in them and then having to spend time getting the hair off of them so I don't look like a slob when I leave the house. And not in an OCD kind of way, where you feel driven or compelled to do something...I just hang up the coat.

Huh.

Anxiety: the other white meat

I write about ADHD a lot and anxiety a little...even though anxiety has really inserted itself into my life in unforgiving and nearly crippling ways since I was a small child.

And that really says a lot right there...that it's such an unremarkable part of my person. Such a constant companion that I would forget to introduce it thoroughly if at all.

So I'd like to write more about it. Starting here:

I spent my childhood under threat of terminal illness. My mind ruminated constantly over thoughts of the impact of death. Every lump was cancer, every surface touched was contaminated with something unstoppable and deadly. Why was I never diagnosed with OCD? I have some theories.

Much of the angst and anguish that I endured, I endured silently and privately inside my own head. I was smart, and I knew that my thoughts were unreasonable...well...I sort of knew...in that way that children who are smart "know" things because they are capable of logical thinking, but can't stop their irrational thoughts because they are children, and still emotionally immature. Consequences always feel bigger when you are small.

I had very particular habits. My shoes had to be tied just so, and my pigtails had to be cinched to my head very snugly or I would think about it all day long. I always buttoned all buttons on clothing. And I was quiet; and I spent a lot of time watching...and thinking...and worrying...and fidgeting in small quiet ways. And for the most part, I kept my worries to myself. As a teenager, my relationship with control only became more calculated. I knew that if I ate just enough, I could starve myself quietly without anyone knowing. My mind could not stop moving from one worry, to the next, and the next...but only I was aware of the actual depth I was drowning in.

I have aged backwards. And if anything, addressing my anxiety has made my ADHD more, not less obvious. I anchored myself to the ground with these thoughts, routines, worries. As I have grown older, for various reasons I have been able to slowly let them fall away...Remeron has only furthered a process I'd begun without chemicals.

And I am thankful for this...because even at the age of 9 I had begun to make myself actually ill from all of the worry. I was tested for autoimmune diseases because my immune system genuinely began to fail under the weight of my fears. They were unable to diagnose me with any particular rheumatological disease...because I don't have one...but my mind was literally causing my body to turn in and fight to destroy itself.

You can't outrun anxiety. The only way past fear is through it. More on that later.

Being Proactive Without Driving Other People Nuts

Of course many of us with ADHD have issues with certain kinds of follow through issues and remembering issues. Oh the joy.

So I have some ways that I deal with these things...for example, I try to either do things right when I remember them or at least create an effective reminder for myself to make sure it's done later. Or I make sure to get a TON of work done when I'm "on" so that I don't screw myself when I'm having an "off" day.

I try to consolidate a lot of things in my life too...for example, I will send a landlord a stack of signed checks for the term of a lease so that I don't have to forget to send a single check every month. Or, if I have the money, I will actually pay chunks of rent at a time...right now I don't need to pay rent on my apartment until March because I already paid three months in advance. (You then have to set a reminder to actually then PAY it in March!)

However...sometimes people don't "get" these things. The person I pay my work studio rent to, for example, was utterly baffled as to why I would want to pay the rent for the entire remainder of the lease now, so we got into a mini-standoff of her saying "no, you can just pay me each month" and me responding "right, but I have the money now, so I'll just pay you now"...until I finally just said " Ah...I try to pay things in chunks to eliminate repetitive tasks and make sure things are done when they need to be done. If it's truly not convenient for you, that's okay, but if it IS, it would be much better for me to pay you now.". That did the trick.

However, there ARE times when our "accommodation" isn't reasonable for others to have to put up with. This wasn't one of those times. But it's good to remember in the back of your brain that the world won't always work the way you want it to, even when YOU are in fact having the best of intentions...

The RE-SET Button

There's a little thing I like to do in my life from time to time called pressing the re-set button. And in my world view there are certain things that need to get re-set regularly.

When I leave my desk at work I hit the re-set button, meaning I organize my work for the next day so I can come in and it's not a mess.

About once a week I go through my bigbig bag to tidy and empty it so I don't start to drown under my own daily accumulations.

Every morning I straighten the blankies on the bed so that it gives the illusion of my room being a little tidier AND so that it feels goooood to climb back in bed at night.

If I don't do things like this my ADHD world start to get very uninhabitable.

Today I am noticing that I may have skipped last week's bag cleaning.

Tonight, I am hitting that re-set button....

Everyday ADHD good times

Let's talk about the trash can in my kitchen and how I haven't been able to find it for a few weeks now. My new roomie, Miss A as we like to call her, moved in at the beginning of the month and so I rearranged some things in order to make things just lovelier in general. One of the things I did, not just for loveliness, but because the growing puppy did not need to be getting any big ideas of digging in the trash can, was to move the garbage and recycling cans into the bottomest shelf of the big cupboard in the kitchen.

I've been looking for it ever since. Blast. Seriously, everytime I need to put something in the garbage can, I start wandering around, and usually end up even going out the porch door looking for it before I get very annoyed and them suddenly remember that it's in that cupboard. It's only been weeks now, let's see if we can't make it months of confusion! (And I don't doubt that my brain can! In fact, I bet we'll be playing this game until I move out of this apartment.)

PS I have been MIA

Because we're waiting to get the interwebs hooked back up at home.

Tomorrow is the glorious day we've all been waiting for...and here you thought my medication had performed miracles, diminishing my need to constantly think aloud or on paper. Well it actually HAS...yay!

But that's not why I haven't been posting :)

The teenage years...

...holy crap, my dog has reached his teenage years...or something. He is a total ball of quick wit, sharp intelligence, and pure, unadulterated ANNOYING.

You can see the gears turning in his head...and you can see that when he is using your leg as a trampoline...for TWO HOURS STRAIGHT, totally unstoppable, that he is doing it with intent, and with great JOY. His joy only grows when you finally roll over from your attempt at couch napping and yell for him to please just stop.

Good lord in heaven...every limit that can be pushed is being pushed. All at once. And he just discovered BARKING this week...GAH.

Right now, for the first time in DAYS he is taking a nap.

Oh how long can this heaven last?