So.
Yeah, things are really rough and difficult right now. Meds are hard to manage and remember why it's so important to take them, when they don't feel like they're helping manage or balance my emotions. But at the same time... You know I had a really terrible day yesterday. Really terrible. But last night, I saw something a friend posted on their blog asking, 'someone write this', and.
I did?
I just sat down and wrote a short story for her, for this friend I've never met but who has been there for me during some of the worst moment of my life. The first author I ever properly collaborated with on anything, let alone the hundred small projects we've debated and considered and brainstormed. Most of those will never come to fruition, but for once writing isn't the point, thinking together is. I had an authoress friend once before, also online, and somehow she vanished a little after a year talking to one another. I still don't know if she had some kind of problem with me or if something bad happened. I really, genuinely hope she's okay.
I thought this newer friendship would end the same way. We stopped talking, we had some distance. But eventually, every so often, we'd talk again. Brief little discussions or jokes. Sometimes that's enough to keep a relationship going. It's enough to be able to say, yes, I still know you and we still get along. We've been talking much more regularly since last week, when she contacted me out of the blue to ask if I'd been watching a new show on Netflix. I hadn't, but I did that day, and it was funny, cute, and clever. Not a lot of internal coherency, but that's alright. There's foreshadowing and theories and a new season coming out at the end of the year. We're both looking forward to it.
Last night, while in the middle of a bad fit of depression, I saw that she wanted someone to write something funny, so I did. I finished up and notified her, then posted it online. I haven't posted a story in more than a year, but for her I did. And she loved it! I was so glad.
Bad things are everywhere, and Bad Thoughts haunt us. But there's an astounding amount of pleasure and joy to be found in giving someone else a little of your time, a little of your energy, a little of your thought. It's very, very rewarding.
I have a lot to do today, and i the next few days I hope I can hold onto this feeling.
Ja na!
Thursday, July 28, 2016
Sunday, March 20, 2016
"I couldn't stick around, so text me in the morning,"--Text Me In The Morning by Neon Trees
It has been a terrible year. It will continue to be so, because things have not yet settled and won't in the next several months. I don't just mean 2016, either--but really, from whatever day you're reading this to a year in the past, I promise, it's been awful.
There have been break-ups, panic attacks, abandonments, child development evaluations, hospital visits, deaths, lost jobs, quit jobs, stolen jobs, lost money, lost homes, massive financial debts--
I could scream. I'd like to. I'd really like to, but I live in an apartment with three roommates and that would be super disrespectful of the time--currently three past twin in the morning. I'm not that far gone, yet: I still have more than enough reason to understand panicked and-or frustrated screaming at two AM is generally considered a bad thing. It's a bad thing most of the time actually, however necessary it seems.
Right now, though, I'd like to talk about medication again. ADHD medication. Mine, in fact.
My father lost his job, which means I lost my health insurance, which means I lost my ability to purchase my Concerta. Which means I've stopped taking it again, sort of, or at least I did this week and most of last week, because hey, isn't it better to have later if I need it than to run out because I kept taking it?
Well... not necessarily. I'm an adult and I function, and I'm moderately used to being off my medicine because I do this often: not falling off the belief in medication bandwagon, but falling off the taking medication train. I get distracted, panicked, depressed, frustrated. I want help, I want attention, sometimes I even want the suffocating despair for reasons I can't fully articulate but occasionally borderline dangerously self-destructive--and before you get too concerned, yes I've notified my family, roommates, and health providers that I'm currently at that level of depressed and frightened and desperate to run away from everything bad, which most of my major daily life concerns currently registers as. It's not like I'm unsupervised or ever going to, y'know, do anything about it.
I'm too practical for that. Mostly I consider that a good thing, though there are of course intense moment of frantic--
Frantic whatever. I'm trying to avoid using the world we all know I'm thinking because this is maybe sort of a supposed to be a family-friendly-type blog. But here, let me fail spectacularly at that avoidance for the sake of saying: No, I don't consider suicide a valid option. I think about it, but I'm not going to do anything. More specifically, when the urges and thoughts come, I refuse them.
Medication, though. I'm not sure, this was a very spur-of-the-moment post so it's not exactly polished--not as though any of them truly have been, ever. I was thinking about the blog out of the blue when I really should be asleep but instead intended to work on a story, and, well, here I am. Ha ha ha, impulse control, not a thing right now. I'm tired and my foot's asleep and if you say 'stream of consciousness' I might just, I don't know, my thoughts aren't exactly making sense right now. I'm part thinking about what I'm writing and part thinking about Mrs. Potato Head from Toy Story. So.
... Yeah. I mentioned I'm not on my ADD pills and this is generally what happens when that is the case: some focus, bursts of creativity, lots of panic over not understanding what's happening in my own head. As someone who has extensively trained myself ot analyze my own mind, that can be a very frightening situation to find myself, and for years now I've characterized my 'extremely ADHD moments' as those during which my thoughts skid to a halt and I urgently think to myself I don't know what I'm thinking about.
There will be words, a complete sentence or paragraph or rant in my head, and I will not know where it came from or what it's actually about. Abstract thought, in that sense, is actually not my friend and never has been: it's more a source of anxiety.
When I work on this blog, I think about Dan. From CHADD, which I haven't attended in a very long time. I miss it. I miss the familiarity of the conversations, even the ones that annoyed me because it was the same stories or questions over and over, repeated every few months. That bothered me eventually, and now I miss them because I could anticipate what was going to happen next. I didn't need to have control to feel in control or comfortable; things were familiar. Now, even if I go back, it wouldn't even be to the same place, let alone the same people. Maybe. Probably. I can hope, but I'm also frightened of the prospect.
I'm frightened of a great deal these days, and I really detest that.
I am not afraid of fear, but I guess I am afraid of the impact fear has on my life. It can tear it, or me, apart. That's an intimidating prospect. I don't like going through my days and having seemingly random, entirely paralyzing and panic-inducing thoughts like "Oh yeah he starts preschool next month I need to have another job by June" and "Should I move out when the lease is up in September even though I should be able to live here another year" and "If I do stay then I'm wasting my sister and Red's staying where they are until September to wait for me".
Adults. Actually honest to god grown-ups out there, reading this right now. I would really, really love someone to talk to about this who isn't my age. I feel very overwhelmed, and most people I can talk to about it have their own problems right now that I am too close to or preoccupied with by half. I'm 23 and feeling alone and abandoned, helpless and hopeless, scared and dumber than I have in a long time, and I don't know what to do. Sorry. I know it's not your problem. I know that'll hurt my parents to read, but right now I'm too close to tears just writing this to pull my punches any more than I am--
And make no mistake, I am. There is so much I spend my time and energies holding back.
Help? Help. Help me.
Sorry.
Ja na.
There have been break-ups, panic attacks, abandonments, child development evaluations, hospital visits, deaths, lost jobs, quit jobs, stolen jobs, lost money, lost homes, massive financial debts--
I could scream. I'd like to. I'd really like to, but I live in an apartment with three roommates and that would be super disrespectful of the time--currently three past twin in the morning. I'm not that far gone, yet: I still have more than enough reason to understand panicked and-or frustrated screaming at two AM is generally considered a bad thing. It's a bad thing most of the time actually, however necessary it seems.
Right now, though, I'd like to talk about medication again. ADHD medication. Mine, in fact.
My father lost his job, which means I lost my health insurance, which means I lost my ability to purchase my Concerta. Which means I've stopped taking it again, sort of, or at least I did this week and most of last week, because hey, isn't it better to have later if I need it than to run out because I kept taking it?
Well... not necessarily. I'm an adult and I function, and I'm moderately used to being off my medicine because I do this often: not falling off the belief in medication bandwagon, but falling off the taking medication train. I get distracted, panicked, depressed, frustrated. I want help, I want attention, sometimes I even want the suffocating despair for reasons I can't fully articulate but occasionally borderline dangerously self-destructive--and before you get too concerned, yes I've notified my family, roommates, and health providers that I'm currently at that level of depressed and frightened and desperate to run away from everything bad, which most of my major daily life concerns currently registers as. It's not like I'm unsupervised or ever going to, y'know, do anything about it.
I'm too practical for that. Mostly I consider that a good thing, though there are of course intense moment of frantic--
Frantic whatever. I'm trying to avoid using the world we all know I'm thinking because this is maybe sort of a supposed to be a family-friendly-type blog. But here, let me fail spectacularly at that avoidance for the sake of saying: No, I don't consider suicide a valid option. I think about it, but I'm not going to do anything. More specifically, when the urges and thoughts come, I refuse them.
Medication, though. I'm not sure, this was a very spur-of-the-moment post so it's not exactly polished--not as though any of them truly have been, ever. I was thinking about the blog out of the blue when I really should be asleep but instead intended to work on a story, and, well, here I am. Ha ha ha, impulse control, not a thing right now. I'm tired and my foot's asleep and if you say 'stream of consciousness' I might just, I don't know, my thoughts aren't exactly making sense right now. I'm part thinking about what I'm writing and part thinking about Mrs. Potato Head from Toy Story. So.
... Yeah. I mentioned I'm not on my ADD pills and this is generally what happens when that is the case: some focus, bursts of creativity, lots of panic over not understanding what's happening in my own head. As someone who has extensively trained myself ot analyze my own mind, that can be a very frightening situation to find myself, and for years now I've characterized my 'extremely ADHD moments' as those during which my thoughts skid to a halt and I urgently think to myself I don't know what I'm thinking about.
There will be words, a complete sentence or paragraph or rant in my head, and I will not know where it came from or what it's actually about. Abstract thought, in that sense, is actually not my friend and never has been: it's more a source of anxiety.
When I work on this blog, I think about Dan. From CHADD, which I haven't attended in a very long time. I miss it. I miss the familiarity of the conversations, even the ones that annoyed me because it was the same stories or questions over and over, repeated every few months. That bothered me eventually, and now I miss them because I could anticipate what was going to happen next. I didn't need to have control to feel in control or comfortable; things were familiar. Now, even if I go back, it wouldn't even be to the same place, let alone the same people. Maybe. Probably. I can hope, but I'm also frightened of the prospect.
I'm frightened of a great deal these days, and I really detest that.
I am not afraid of fear, but I guess I am afraid of the impact fear has on my life. It can tear it, or me, apart. That's an intimidating prospect. I don't like going through my days and having seemingly random, entirely paralyzing and panic-inducing thoughts like "Oh yeah he starts preschool next month I need to have another job by June" and "Should I move out when the lease is up in September even though I should be able to live here another year" and "If I do stay then I'm wasting my sister and Red's staying where they are until September to wait for me".
Adults. Actually honest to god grown-ups out there, reading this right now. I would really, really love someone to talk to about this who isn't my age. I feel very overwhelmed, and most people I can talk to about it have their own problems right now that I am too close to or preoccupied with by half. I'm 23 and feeling alone and abandoned, helpless and hopeless, scared and dumber than I have in a long time, and I don't know what to do. Sorry. I know it's not your problem. I know that'll hurt my parents to read, but right now I'm too close to tears just writing this to pull my punches any more than I am--
And make no mistake, I am. There is so much I spend my time and energies holding back.
Help? Help. Help me.
Sorry.
Ja na.
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