"I took a walk around the world to ease my troubled mind"--Kryptonite by Three Doors Down

In this age of social media and texting and touch screens and minimum-wage part-time jobs, it's easy to forget that you have to communicate with people.


Specifically, that you have to put effort into it. Generally, I get by. Generally, the people who matter to their varying degrees understand well enough that just because I don't talk to them doesn't mean I don't love them. But then I get to face, all at once and by surprise, that I am losing them anyway.

Specifically, I have an uncle. My favorite uncle. The one I'm closest to, the one I know and love best of all of them.

I am probably never going to see him, hug him, or touch his hand, again. He is Not Well. He's fine, apparently, he's himself, which is the most important part. But he is probably not going to be there the next time I visit that corner of the country.

The last time I was there, I spent a day with him. We went out in his boat, and he took me to see manatees, my all time favorite animal. He encouraged me to get in the water with them, and even though I couldn't see them from there--they were so close. I got second-degree sunburns that day. I spent the rest of that two-week trip in varying states of pain and tears and panic, and have scars. Freckles, too, but scars, all up and down my arms. Because I was foolish that day, because I forgot that there are many more consequences to not wearing sunblock that having an uneven tan my coworkers would mock me for when I went back home. And he knew, and he laughed at me, and that was good.

I spent a huge portion of that day leaning next to him, shoulders bumping when the boat went over a wave, laughing and singing along to the radio with him. And every so often I made sure to look over at him and burn that image into my mind, because I knew then, at his side, what it's so hard to remember when I'm on the other coast. That I would probably never seen him again.

Then I saw him three more times that trip, in those two weeks, and like an idiot, I forgot again. Because he was fine, he was walking, talking, laughing, mocking. He was brash and big and just. So perfectly himself. So perfectly and completely the uncle that I love so fucking much that I lost track of reality again. And worse yet, during those times, I was aching and pained and exhausted from my burns, so I barely interacted with him as I should have. I could have had an entire other day with him, or at least the afternoon, but I slept through it.

I was hurt, I was healing, fine, whatever--I missed a chance.

I won't regret my scars, but I'll always regret that nap.

I spent one magical, amazing, shocking day with my uncle on the open ocean, and it was amazing. Even now I can stop sometimes and just--remember what it looked like, light on the sea, wind pulling at my clothes and the waves, at the way he urged me on when I took the helm and tried--not well, mind--to guide the boat. I turned us around, and he just said, You started a figure eight, now you have to finish it! And he laughed.

So I finished it and I spent the day with him and I etched every second of it I could into my soul, because I loved it.

I hope he loved it, too. I really do.

We got lunch.

It was good, I think, but maybe, probably, that was the company.

So. Uncle--this is something I want to tell you but don't have the nerve to say in person, on the phone, in text. I'm better with prose, and maybe you knew that but maybe you didn't, because I don't think I ever spoke to you about my writing.

I asked you, last April, about tattoos. I mentioned, very deliberately, that I'm thinking about getting one. I wasn't bold enough to say, guess what it is. I was worried it would make you sad, or uncomfortable, or--something. I'm not sure how it will make you feel.

I don't like needles and I don't like pain and I never wanted a tattoo, but about a year ago now I woke up one morning and thought, I want a tattoo that says Tank Girl. I want a tattoo for my uncle, to remind me how strong and sturdy he's always thought I was. I want to be able to look at it and go, Yeah. I'm tough enough to do this. I want a tattoo to remind me of the first man I ever really believed was invulnerable. I want a tattoo dedicated to my personal Superman.

I want that. I'm looking into local parlors. I'm trying to decide on a place--somewhere I can see it, without a mirror. Somewhere bold, but tasteful. I'm looking at prices. I'm looking at fonts.

If you die, Uncle, before you get to see it, because I'm poor and broke and I work minimum wage, part-time, and I don't know when I'll be able to afford it, let alone tickets across the country, I want you to know it's going to happen.

I love you, I miss you, I cherish you. Even when I don't say it. Even when I don't text you. Because I'm bad at that, at staying in contact even with the people most important to me. I'm so goddamn bad at it. You helped make me. Formative years, and earliest memories--you're there. You'll always be there. Important moments and critical events, you were there.

Thank you for taking me to see the manatees. Thank you for showing me the dolphins. Thank you for giving me the ocean. Thank you for every hug, every afternoon or evening of babysitting, thank you for every time out. Thank you for letting me help you with your Star Trek Christmas Tree a few years ago.

I think, maybe, I should send this to you as an email.

But I don't think I even have your email address.

I love you.

"Even despite our estrangement I've got a small query for you: What Comes Next?"--What Comes Next, Jonathon Groff, Hamilton

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!

"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. 

"Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I will try again tomorrow.' "—Mary Anne Radmacher

I know I had something clever to say here, but I can't remember what. I got distracted—surprise!—by reviewing some of my old posts. And then, just now—mind you, it's literally four in the morning as I type this—I wanted to use an M-dash by my Chromebook can't, so I went through an older post (Denial is not just a river in Egypt) to find one.

It was horrifying to read. I remember writing it, vaguely. I remember how hurt I was by everything that had been going on. Worse than that, though, is how God led me to reading that post now of all times. Why? Why.

My grandfather is dying. He is in hospice, and I don't know what to say to him. My uncle's kidney is failing because of his chemo—he can keep up the chemo and die from the kidney, or he can stop the chemo and die from the cancer. There is no third option. My mother was upset and went out somewhere at night and didn't answer her phone no matter how many times I called; like that time with my dad, I thought she was dead. There was screaming and sobbing, and I'm pretty sure I scared my dad with the way I reacted and the things I said. My—

My—
My parents are splitting up.
I can't handle the things going on in my life right now. A few days ago I came the closest I ever have to killing myself. It wasn't particularly close, but it was still scary. I'm trying sometimes to work on exhuming the things that haunt me, but it's hard to remember to when things seem so okay until I let myself sit down and think. When that happens, it's hard not to scream and claw my own skin off, my eyes out, I—

My psychiatrist said I'm not a violent person, and I laughed in her face. "My violence," I told her, "is self-destructive. It's self-directed. I'm a very violent person."

I would destroy my body if given half the chance, the time or tools. It's not masochism, it's self flagellation. Not in the truest sense of the word, of course. I'm not that religious. Maybe, just maybe, I'm not that crazy either. I hope.

Bottom line is: I'm alive. I'm trying to stay that way. It's hard. It's been a hard few years, and the fact that the days keep passing it becoming more and more frightening as I realize how little I've accomplished, changed, or accepted. I'm trying to remember that I've made "progress". I'm trying to remember that I "have grown so much." I'm trying to remember how to face my problems. I'm trying to remember how to be part of the world I've spent the last two years just watching, and I'm trying to remember why I should even bother.

I want to talk to my kids. The four, the siblings, the ones who I love so much and haven't seen in more than a year. I'm scared to because they might not like or remember me anymore. They're children, and children are hurt so easily. Their parents are—were?—my friends. I should be able to call them and say, "Hey! Sorry I fell out of touch, but do you think..." and ask to meet somewhere, or if maybe I could visit. I should be able to, but I'm scared and busy and sad.

The monsters in my life are swallowing me and I can't remember how I used to fight them.

But I remember how I was going to begin this. I was going to say: "I know I used to have a specific format for these posts, but I can't recall quite what it was." I could go look, but that requires more checking, double-checking, and cross-referencing than I want to do at 4:23am.

I have another blog post to write. But hey, I want to apologize. I'm sorry this isn't about ADHD anymore. I'm sorry I lost the plot and purpose of this. I'm sorry I stopped posting and writing. I'm sorry my life has taken the direction is can. I'm sorry a cry for help like this is the best I can manage right now. I'm sorry I only come here for the bad stuff. I'm sorry I don't have better news. I'm sorry I stopped going to group.

I'm sorry I try to take on so much responsibility for what other people feel. That's one of the things that scared Dad the other night, I think. He realized how much I try to be nice by protecting others' feelings. I'm sorry, in the sense of deep regret, that I was so genuinely confused when he said it was more than I should try to bear. And I'm sorry, in the sense of deep shame, that I wish I hadn't shown him that part of me, because now he is frightened and worried about me, and he has enough to deal with already.

I will try to post again soon.

Ja na.

Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Hi guys.

Here's something I've been stewing over lately. When you've been in therapy for as long as I have, and especially when you've studied Psych./Soc. like I did in school, you develop certain... talents. Skills if you will. Such developments are very helpful, both in therapy and in life. When something goes wrong, or you catch yourself behaving in a way that is resultant of whatever you're receiving treatment for, you can apply the mechanisms you've learned. They can be incredibly helpful, but like everything else in this world there are pros and cons. Once you've mastered (so to speak) the art of self-examination, you start looking at other people the same way. You start applying what you've learned to them. And that doesn't always turn out well.

The ability I'm referring to today is that of psychoanalysis.

Dictionary.reference.com defines psychoanalysis as follows:
noun
1) a systematic structure of theories concerning the relations of conscious and unconscious psychological processes
2) a technical procedure for investigating unconscious mental processes and for treating psychoneuroses

Today, let's talk about the latter definition.

Having psychoanalysis in your supply closet of coping methods is invaluable (unless you are one of those individuals who take it too far *cough* BBC Sherlock Holmes *cough*). It allows you to ponder things out for yourself, to pick apart your motives, desires, and actions. Once you've done that, it's easier to focus on each aspect. That's where the professional help comes in. Understanding not why you do something but what drives you--or stops you as the case may be. What blocks you from getting what you want?

In theory it's a fairly straightforward process. Ask questions; get answers. The questions my therapists usually ask me, and I have now begun to ask myself, are paraphrased below.

What do you want?
What actions can you take to achieve that goal?
What steps have you taken?
What stopped you from taking those steps?
What are the excuses your subconscious provides?
What are you afraid of?/What about this makes you anxious?

What are the reasons behind your reluctance to act?

What is the origin of that reason?

What can you do to manage those fears and anxieties?

Well, essentially those questions. I think I got the spirit of it, anyway. Fact of the matter is that these aren't just questions; these are The Hard Questions. At the source of every decision or non-decision you make or don't make (choosing not to decide is still choosing, by the way) is a reason. A fear, anxiety, a traumatic incident, whatever. It is one of your vulnerabilities.You may not be able to recognize it.

More importantly, chances are you don't want to.

Your mind and heart and sometimes body will fight and fight and fight to keep that Reason hidden. Safe and untouched at the back of your mind or deep in yourself where it won't hurt as bad, and you can live without acknowledging it. You will rebel against the invasive, cruel, rude and unnecessary interrogation you or your therapist is putting you through.

You will get angry.
You will be afraid.
And it will hurt.

There are as many reasons, many of which are instinctive emotional reactions, to bury your vulnerability. Sometimes you hide these parts of you because you're ashamed. Sometimes it is because you have been hurt before. Sometimes it is even because you have examined it before and know it's irrational--but you feel it is truth regardless.

(Shit like this is why we need therapy.)

I can't very well expect you to examine yourself so uncomfortably closely without doing so myself. In the spirit of fairness and the immortal words of everyone everywhere:

I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

I genuinely believe I am replaceable. To expand on that a little: I believe myself to be a burden, and feel very deeply that "I am not the child my parents would have wanted". Why do I think that? Simple: I was conditioned to, through many unhealthy friendships, believe absolutely in my lack of self-worth. I am worth nothing without them by my side, I am unwanted, I am substandard, I am a bad person. Those thoughts wormed their way into my mind around the same time I started to really grasp the concept of "money" and understanding that my medications and therapy sessions were draining my family's funds. I was causing trouble, I was making life difficult for them. I still am: I am unemployed, I do not drive, I drain the family coffers with my wants and wishes and medicines. To this day I have problems--big problems--with feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness. I wrestle everyday with the concept that I am loved [And here I am stumped. I don't know how to phrase the next part of the sentence. ...because of who I am? ...despite who I am? ...regardless of who I am? They all have drastically different meanings. I'm not in my family's heads; I can't figure out which words to use and be accurate.] Because of this:

I am afraid of being left behind and/or forgotten. That is it. That is the bottom line. This one is simple. I submit myself to abuse, I am desperate to leave an impression, I dress in an unusual fashion, I spend time memorizing jokes. I am grateful for every single instance in which someone I have not seen for some time recalls who I am, and yet due to the above, remain incapable of speaking to such people for fear of interfering in their life and causing them trouble. In school I was so desperate to be acknowledged I maintained abusive relationships, openly mocked not only myself but others in a frantic bid to impress my so-called friends. I devoted myself to them, some more than others. I loved them and gave them everything I could--nearly all of me. It wasn't enough. For almost three years I spent money, my family's money, to talk about my friends and get advice on how to help them (she wondered why my years of therapy didn't seem to make a difference). Even now, even this second, I am fighting the urge to give in, throw what little self-respect I've built up since graduating out the metaphorical window, and contact them. Just one of them. Just her. Just her.

I hold myself responsible for things out of my control/I give myself too much credit. In contrast to the above I tend to feel that I (potentially) have a large impact on those around me. You saw some of this in my last post, but let me give you an example: If my father and grandmother get into a fight, and he leaves angry to go on a drive, I consider it my duty to catch him before he leaves, give him a hug, and try and calm him as much as I can. So far he's always come back. No car crashes, no arrests, no anything awful that doesn't bear thinking about. But if I were to move out, and my father and grandmother get into a fight, and he leaves angry to go on a drive, and crashes and dies because he wasn't thinking clearly--that would be my fault. I would carry my father's death on by shoulders for the rest of my life, not simply because I would mourn and miss him, but because I was responsible for not being there. I selfishly left home and foolishly expected my family of adults to actually be rational, responsible people. I also consider myself responsible for losing friends. You see, I have been friends with and lost so many people who are so very different. The only common denominator in every one of those relationships--was me. Logically, I am at fault. Which leads quite nicely into my next admittance.

Something is wrong with me. No ifs, ands, or buts. Something is wrong with me. As a person, a friend, a daughter, a sister, niece, cousin, goddaughter, human being, something is wrong with me. And whatever it is, is irreparable.

(I go to therapy to deal with shit like this.)

So. Psychoanalysis, yes? For me that means prying myself apart, combing through the separated strands of my memories, feelings, impulses, and thoughts, and looking at them very, very hard until I start seeing how maybe this way on the left there has something to do with that down in the right corner.

It is an invaluable ability. It tides me over between sessions. It empowers me to take the lead in my own therapy appointments instead of following the guidance of the person giving counsel (thought sometimes that is most certainly needed). I can direct us to where I want to go, what I want to work on, what I think needs to be examined.

(Therapy means unweaving the messy tapestry of my life, one section at at a time, and painstakingly investigating the source of the errors and mistakes before putting it back together, better. More like I wanted it to be when I started. Thankfully, despite my metaphor, I still get to jump around. I don't have to do it in any particular order. As things come up, as I have my revelations and epiphanies and go through various life experiences, I tackle them. One step at a time.

It's sewing and realizing you fucked up a stitch a while back but not so far it's worth tying off the thread where you are. It's going back and looking at what you did, trying different ways to fix it, and finding something that works. Then you move forward.

It's trying to get a degree and having to go through prerequisite classes, only the classes are the therapy, and the degree is you finally in control of your life.)

But you can't do it alone, not really. I have had several experiences with bringing something up and having my therapists calling me out on that one, odd thing I said. Like a thread sticking out of the hem of your shirt. And she pulls at it insistently until I am clinging to my defenses/excuses/reasons by the skin of my teeth... and then once more. And out comes the truth. The hard truth. The painful, shameful, embarrassing, irrational truth. And then I can start thinking clearly.

At last my defenses are down. At last my blinders are off. At last I recognize that I am in a safe environment, working with someone who's primary concern is not to make my life easier, but to help me make my life better.

So yeah. At the start of this I mentioned the pros and cons.

Fact of the matter is, there are very few cons. Just one, really, that comes to mind...

I bring all this up because a fortnight or so ago I found myself idly, coldly, objectively dissecting the reasons my sister has not taken a certain action. I came to a perfectly reasonable, rather upsetting conclusion and wondered how she would react when I mentioned it to her.

Then I stopped and thought how much that would hurt her, and decided not to do so.

During the subsequent moment of clarity I made a choice... a new rule for myself: I will not psychoanalyze the people I care about. And if I do, without realizing?

I will not bring up my deductions in a fight. I will not back the people I love into a corner using things I've learned in confidence or realized on my own as weapons against family and friends. I know that pain. I know that fear. I know the helplessness and misery that comes with becoming the victim of people less conscientious than myself. I know what it feels like to be betrayed.

I also know what it feels like to be the assailant.

I've done that. And I spent years trying to make up for it. Years never being quite forgiven. It hurt. Hurts nearly as much as being on the receiving end of such an attack--and yes. They are attacks.

As someone who has been on both sides, I think I'm entitled to say that both suck and nobody ends up truly happy. One because they are haunted by another's words and deeds, the other because they will always wonder 'what if'.

I would say it happens on accident sometimes but I've never had that experience. Each time I hurt someone like that, using my intimate knowledge of their feelings and weaknesses and personal demons, I knew exactly what it would do. I planned what to say ahead of time. I steered the conversation down a path that would allow me to say, quite naturally, the thing I knew would hurt them most.

So. Psychoanalysis, yes? No?

Pros: better person, handle on your own emotions, understanding the reasons behind (in)actions, taking charge of your own life, making progress, learning more about yourself, able to better understand others

Cons: better able to hurt others' feelings, temptation to use knowledge against others, potential for social disaster when incorrect, potential path to misery

Basically? It would behoove you to remember a few things:
Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
Karma is a bitch.
Think, then speak.
With great power comes great responsibility.
They are rubber and you are glue; whatever you say bounces off them and sticks to you.

And that's a wrap, folks. I know my personal views and experiences got us way off track. But honestly, it says at the top of the page I'm ADD, why did you expect me to stay focused?

...I think that's the closest I've come to writing an essay is about four years. Golly.

Ja na!

"There's more to life than trying to survive"—Annie, Vanessa Carlton

SO, when D at the the CHADD meetings found out about my trip (I'm in New York at the moment) he essentially told me to blog while I was gone. The problem with that, I have found, is that while doing things worth blogging about, I am, well, busy. Doing them. And when I'm not, when I have a minute, I'm not blogging because I'm taking that minute for myself. So I haven't really managed my time well enough to blog. I've only gone online twice before this, to email my family. I haven't even texted my friend like I said I would. I need to get on that...

But I digress. The only reason I'm (the following no longer applies as it is several hours after I first put pen to paper today; right now I'm at the computer. Duh.) sitting here right now, by myself in the basement apartment of my aunt and uncle's house with a blanket wrapped around me, scribbling away in a borrowed-without-permission-but-with-FULL-intent-of-returning binder is that, for once—or rather, for the first time this trip—the words came into my head and I couldn't stop them. Clear words, when I often think initially in intentions and impressions. The words were:

"I'm so overwhelmed right now. I'm so overwhelmed..." Completely and totally overwhelmed by what is going on with/to/for me. I had to "take a minute. Just a minute. Just a minute. A minute, a minute, a minute. A minute, I need a minute. Just a minute, a minute, a minute..."

Which I did, curling up with a blanket that doesn't smell like home wrapped loosely around me.

...
...

That reads, to those who don't speak panic-attack-ese: I took a blanket off 'my' bed, wrapped it around my shoulders, debated over bringing a stuffed animal with me, walked over my suitcase very carefully wihout looking at it as tears gathered in my eyes. It means that I sat down on the part of the couch I've spent the most time on, brought my legs up, and fell slowly over into the fetal position as I adjusted the blanket so it was over my head, still muttering (maybe, I'm not sure, I may just have been thinking it with increasing anxiety and decreasing coherence, as is often the case in such circumstances, about needing a minute, just a minute, a minute, a minute, a minute, a minute.

(Sounds poetic, doesn't it? It isn't.)

It means that I gave myself over to helpless, hopeless (I wasn't sure which so I went with both) shuddering as near-scalding tears rand across my face to my temple. It means I was listening to the sporadic pouding of feet over my head as my second cousins ran around and my aunt talking to my dad  on the phone, and it means that I was hoping, vaguely but sincerely, that someone (Jen) would come downstairs and find me and hold me or something. But that, of course, didn't happen.

It hardly ever does.

And then it means, if you read very carefully and think about your own experiences in such things, that I stopped listening to them and started feeling the heat of my own frantic-ish breaths against my face, and that I realized somewhat that I did not, in fact, want to get up and walk over to my bed for my inhaler so I had to calm down. I started feeling, slightly, the pulsing pf blood through my veins as I started, perhaps,  to regulate my breathing.  Which of course got me thinking about runnings laps outside in the winter in my seventh grade  year, and the female eighth grade Phys. Ed. teacher telling me/us to breathe in through our noses and out through our mouths. I did that for a bit, then shifted slightly and the blanket moved an inch or so and I could see light, which I didn't want, and smell fresh air, which I realized I kind of did.

I moved the blanket back to darkness and realized acutely that the blanket did NOT smell like home, or dreams, or anything familiar, not even, really, the house I was staying in, so likely it was the smell of the last person to use the blanket before me, which was weird. Then I rememberd, I think, that the teacher had actually said in through the mouth, out through the nose (so as not to harm the sinuses or somesuch thing) and started doing that instead.

That was about when I realized that there wasn't much difference between having my eyes open or closed. And no, that thought didn't lead to some for of epiphany. In fact, I'm not sure what I thought about then, but it wasn't long before the tears dried on my face, at that time proving I had taken several minutes, not one, and I sat up.

And started thinking about how D had said I should keep blogging while I'm gone. That was when I got the binder off the bookshelf. Then I sat back down and started writing.

As of now I'm starting (again, not true present tense as I'm on the computer, but whatever) my fourth front-side-only sheet of paper, and my hand is cramping because I've written so much in so short a period of time.

Yay me.

And Jen has come downstairs, though that was just to find out if I would prefer she drive me to the bus stop tomorrow, or her husband, my cousin. (I picked her because we get along really well, whereas I've never been all that close to my second-eldest cousin. [Hah, funny story: my eldest cousin was born on the due date of the aforementioned second-eldest, and vice versa—one was early, the other late, just enough so they switched birthdays.] )

I'm suddenly realizing I haven't eaten yet today, and that I should try to finish the "DEEP JUNGLE" level of Kingdom Hearts today AND that I need to  pack up down here because my "jast murried" cousin and his wife are going to crash here tonight. Probably. And I'm leaving this place. Tomorrow. Not never-to-return or something—I'll be back in about two weeks—but I have to go and get on a bus at about one A.M. on Saturday to go to Maine.

Which is what started all of this, by the way. Talking about bus tickets and the buying thereof, and getting to the bus stop. And I'm proud of myself; I never once mentioned that I HATE BUSES.

I really do.

But, yeah. So, hmm, let's see... a quick (HA!) run-down of events since the night before I left.

I was supposed to have started packing the day before (Saturday) but I went and got my hair cut and then spent a few hours with my mom talking to my hairdresser, as apparently I now have one, and I'm not realy clear on what happened then, but I only got around to packing my new $60  purple suitcase on Sunday, late-afternoon at best. Then the Secoind Degree Sunburn for HELL that I got on Friday started acting up and giving me incredible amounts of pain.  At which point I became essentially uselkess in the matter of packing my own luggage. I could and did, however, prove the case I've been making agains cleaning my room: I know almost precisely where nearly everything in my room is, even if you can't find it, thankyouverymuch.

In fact, there's a Marvel Universe character, Dr. Modern (not a superheo) who deals with things so case-sensitive that he doesn't use a filing system—he names folders things like "Weird" because he thinks the contents are weird, and leaves all the oddly labeled folders stacked around his place of residence/employment, I'm not sure which. And he can find anything he needs to because he memorizes the information and where he put it. No one would ever be able to be all in-steal/copy the file in question-out  because they would have to look through everything!

So, yeah. Just because my room is terribly disorganized doesn't mean I don't know where things are. And a good portion of the tisme I can't find something it's because someone else touched it since last I did. So there! (Can't you just imagine someone stamping their foot and sticking their tongue out immediately after saying that? I can. But I didn't.)

Anyway, I proved my case, and after hours of intense discomfort I passed out on my mom's shoulder, my arms (where I was burned) wrapped in a towel or something with an ice pack and calami lotion, doped up in Benedryl. And they still hurt when I woke up.

But whatever. Dad drove me to the airport, and having already gotten special permission to come with me past security due to my anxiety issues, came in with me. He helped me with my bags, felt triumph over the fact that my larger bag weighed in at exactly 49 pounds... and got chosen for a 'random' search. Grr. And my bag was searched too, my carry-on! Apparently my tube of toothpaste was too big. I had to let them throw it away!!! I mean, this was a totally new package of Aquafresh, bought just for me, for my trip, and they threw it away! I felt horrible, terrible. That was money, that was mine, that was... in the garbage can. I could've killed somebody. I swear, if I weren't so anxious... And my arms, which had calmed down as I had? (My body has this neat history of having actual, legitimate physical problems crop up when I am uncomfortable with something. Like, I would be panicky-nervous about a class before school and I would throw up, thus ensuring I couldn't go to school for 24 hours.)

But back to my arms. Yeah, they started acting up again. Just like that. A tube of toothpaste, a theoretically "...entirely random, I promise. A lot of people think it isn't true, but the system really does just select random people..." search, and I was almost back to full-blown agony. And I still had to repack my carry-on ! Then, of course, as we were looking for my departure gate, this announcement comes on both the speakers and the TV screens that we don't pay attention to. Then we realize that it mentions my flight number and includes the words 'about to depart without you'. My dad and I looked at the nearest screen.

Yep, that's my last name, but... "Victor", it said. My first impression was more or less, I hate it when my name has too many characters. as my whole eighth grade year my name in teh school system was Victor. My second impression was more along the lines of oh my god no way.


There are four and a half more pages that I wrote earlier this afternoon, and I'll post that tommorrow or the day after, but I'm burning time and, frankly, sick of transcribing things from paper to screen right now.  I mean, I already wrote this once today! And, yeah, okay, I figured this point made a nice cliffhanger.

If your nervous, however, I suggest you go back and read the first sentence.

I obviously made it here.

But thanks for the concern.

Ja na!

"Just ignore all these present tense"— It's Beginning to Get to Me, Snow Patrol

"Some people don't know what depression is like. Others do. I know some of both, but for some reason many are unable or unwilling to accept that having depression is not the same as being depressed. They are very different things: you are depressed when your boyfriend breaks up with you three days before Valentine's; you have depression when you spend days, months or even years at a time feeling like a waste of space. I am not embellishing anything. I'm not exaggerating to get the point across or emphasizing any one particular idea or stereotype. Okay?

When you have depression, it's not like being bipolar or moody, okay? It's not just being sad all the time. When you're sad, you are sad. When you are depressed, you are at the bottom of a ten-foot hole with no ladder, no rope, no helpers, and not enough [self-]control to stop digging. You can't stop digging. You can't. Every time you try the ground caves in just a bit more, so you get even deeper, farther, without ever having lifted a finger. You fall down into what amounts to an emotional pit of molasses. You can't really move all that well because you can't gather enough energy to try. You can't see your way out because some of it got in your eyes. You can't really call for help because you're choking—on everything; loneliness, pain, failed hopes, fallen dreams, and an unyielding, God-like fury that this, whatever 'this' is, is happening to you. You want to scream, "why do you keep doing this to me" at the top of your lungs, shout out to the heavens, "leave me alone" and whisper in the darkness where only you can hear, "help me, someone please help me".

But you can't. You can't, because there is an overriding knowledge that you are not worth it. You are useless. You are a genuine, certified, waste... of... space... so why would anyone help you? You don't even have the right to ask. Your advice and opinions are useless, your questions a waste of time, your shoulder unworthy of anyone's tears, and your tears unworthy of anyone's shoulder.

So why even bother?

Surely not because some part of you that knows these things aren't true is crying out in denial. Not because you can see the concern on the faces of those around you—if you have them. If you can find the strength to look.

While it's easy enough—or no, not easy, simple—it's simple enough to find a good day or thirty during a lingering, soul-deep depressive state that goodness, optimism, hope, or even joy is truly only skin deep. Maybe it permeates through to the bottom layer of skin. If so, you're lucky, and I envy you because for the rest of us, or at least for me, something happens every day to strip away one more inch of what, where, and who I wanted to be at this point in my life until the picture I held to so strongly is riddled with holes and rips and scorch marks to the point of being unrecognizable. Those single days of skin-deep happiness are slowly chipping away at the life I wanted to have, the life I dreamed of that got me through my senior year of high school. At this point, even my memory of the full and clear image is more than fuzzy around the edges.

Here is a brief report of my life since graduation in June:
I've done some things I wanted to do, but there are more, important things that I haven't done.
I've seen and spent time with people I never thought I'd see again, but the people I really want to see are completely out of my life.
I've done things I never thought I'd be able to do, but other, personal things that used to come naturally have become incredibly difficult.
I've met, and as such now know, more people than I expected to know, but the people I spent the last six years with are no longer accessible to me.
I've matured in ways I never expected, but my coping skills have regressed to what they were during Frosh year at the latest and/or six years old at the earliest.
I've proven myself capable of so much more than I ever dreamed, but I haven't done anything more than spend my days in a constant state of idle, depressed boredom.
I've decided that I deserve more than I was settling for in so many aspects of my life, but I'm expecting progressively less and less in others.
I've got so many good ideas, but I lack the self-discipline required to actually be productive
I've been working hard to be a better person, but I've started to hate myself again.

I don't know what to do."


I wrote this several weeks ago during, obviously, an utterly downer mood. But that doesn't mean that those feelings don't follow me around from day to day. They do. That's what true depression does. Sucks, doesn't it?

Yes, yes it does.

No matter how many good, or even amazing, things happen to me, there is still always something that can be taken away. You can lose things even more quickly than you gained them, and when that starts happening with frightening regularity, the scales tip because suddenly the list of things you've lost is much larger and heavier than the list of things you have, many if not most of which are of little consequence.

I'm not trying for sympathy, okay? I'm trying to explain just a bit of what it's like to be in my head when things are going wrong. When things start going bad, my head is a very, very unsafe place to be. Not because I'm going to be so overwhelmed that I kill myself—I won't—but because there are times when I desperately want to.

Really, I'm so lucky in that regard: many people just give up.There's nothing around them, nothing within sight or reach, that is important enough for them to fight themselves for. Many people, an average of about 3000 people daily, in fact, just give up. And I, for one, don't actually blame them. I mean, yes, they're at fault, but I can't bring myself to be angry at them at all. Frustrated, yes—why didn't they try harder?—but the fact that they did it is pretty much evidence to the fact that, in most cases, they couldn't find anything worth living for. Which brings me back to my being lucky.

See, I've developed, after several years persisting misery, a respect for myself that I did not previously have. I was told hundreds of times, by several different people, the words which are paraphrased below:

"It gets better."

And after a few years, without even realizing it, I began to believe that things would, in fact, get better. Lo and behold, they did. Those simple words, or rather, that simple and persistent sentiment, fought its way to the core of my being through the thick and thin of the misery I was in without any help from me whatsoever and it has stayed there all this time. I do not always remember that I have this solid assurance that things will get better within me, but I know that it's true. I know that the pain, however terrible, is temporary. It will go away, and I'll be okay again.

That knowledge created within me another truth: If I give in and let myself die things won't get better, because there will be nothing at all; I'll be dead. Whatever kind of afterlife claims me, be it heaven, purgatory, hell, rebirth, or simple nothingness, I won't be in my life anymore, and that will be the end of that.

I can't kill myself because things will get better. And if things will get better I can't kill myself.

Simple as pie, really. It's a miserable existence, but I can and will keep living with the hope that the best of my past will be the worst of my future.


Ja na!

"Sekai ichi no otoko to yobareru tame ni"—Character Song Carnival, One Piece

This is for people who don't really know about me or the way I think. For people who, specifically, don't understand the thought processes of someone with depression and anxiety disorder. I hope that having one specific account from one specific person helps clear up any question you may or may not have had.



Now, then. Tonight I'm auditioning for a role in a play at the semi-local community theater I've been volunteering at for.... Hmm, going on four years now (please note that I still mark years by when school starts). So yeah. I've read the play. I know the writer. I know the building like the back of my hand, even though, being a theater the exact layout changes fairly often. I've been in, what? Ten, thirteen actual plays and more skits than I could ever possibly count.
First, a bit of background: I’ve been involved with theater off and on—mostly on—since I was nine years old and eagerly participating in the after-school play. During the period of time from fourth grade to freshman year, I did just about everything there was to do, from acting to (admittedly rudimentary) set and costume design. I was in drama class for three years, first at my middle school and then my first high school. I was cast in both after-school productions during my time in middle school. I thoroughly enjoyed those three years in Drama, but decided not to continue studying theater after I transferred schools due to unfortunate circumstances... But oh wait. I can actually say this without having people freak out on my and send me in for evaluations! 

Okay, people. I had always disliked the drama teacher at my new school, from before I entered junior high. However, I loved working in theater enough to try and put that aside. I signed up for Theater II and on the first day of school walked into the auditorium with happy anticipation curling in my gut and my head held high. Class started and within five minutes of the bell ringing he called my friend a cow. A cow. One does not call troubled sixteen year old girls with body issues COWS. But he did. And he remembered me from when I had (almost) inadvertently humiliated him in from of potential students two years before. He didn't say anything, but I could tell her remembered and he could tell I did, too. Thus began my sophomore year drama class.


I didn't last three months.


In under three months, I probably missed fourteen or fifteen of his classes. Sometimes I missed a whole day, sometimes just Drama. Now, why did I not attend class, you may want to know. Well, friend, let me tell you:


I couldn't walk into the auditorium without inevitably, instinctively 
looking
for
a
way
to
kill
myself.

And there was no shortage of methods, considering the tools left scattered around by the Technical Theater class who were building the set for the upcoming play and the catwalk that I knew how to get up on and any number of other things. I remember turning in one assignment in all my time in that class: it was part of a group competition-type thing. The teacher shut me down four minutes into my presentation. "Okay, that's enough. Next, please," like it was a freaking audition. I dropped out of the class. More to the point, I attended school on a day I had that class and then sat in the waiting room of the counselor's office until I could talk to my counselor. They asked me to go to my class and told me that they would send a note to get me when he could see me. I said something along the lines of "I would, quite literally, rather die". (Not five minutes after saying that I was sitting across from my counselor. Imagine that.) By the end of the period I was all set up to go to study hall during the time I would have been in Drama, and I was happy as a clam.

The day I quit was also the day a large group presentation was due. I hadn't really known any of the people in my group. They were all older and smarter and, worse, they actually liked the teacher I was so afraid of. Regardless, the assignment was due. I didn't go to class, so I obviously did not turn anything in. As I walked across the patio to get to my friends, a girl I had known for years stood up from her table. "Ditcher," she accused. Another girl from the class looked over at me, sighed in a highly visible and dramatic fashion, then shook her head. I was frozen on the spot. It was the first time since coming to that school that anyone had drawn attention to me, that anyone had called me out, so to speak. More names were called, more accusations that I can't even remember now—something about hiding from responsibilities and being a coward who abandons people. I had no idea what to do, and I remembering being so, so, so relieved when two of my friends, one of whom was the one who had been called cow on my first day of school, seemed to see what was happening and walked over to get me, to rescue me.


Or so I thought. 'Cow' chatted happily with the drama kids who had been attacking me while the other girl took my hand and my lunch and led me over to where we were sitting. she sat me down and handed me my lunch and asked if I was okay. I told her something along the lines of "I'm sure I will be" and then 'Cow' swaggered over to us. (I didn't even know she could swagger, but she did.) She asked if I had really dropped out of class. Thinking back on it now, I can't even figure out how she knew I had been planning to drop out of class, but she did. They both did. And when I said yes and told them I would have study hall and, man, I couldn't believe that Stephenie had actually said all that. Now, both of these friends also quite liked the teacher, and knew I didn't. The one in class with me knew I was on edge when I was in class and how many days I missed, just not why. Worse yet, she has panic disorder too. And she looked at me contemptuously and sneered, 


"I can. You deserve it. What were you thinking, dropping out of class like that? You can't just do that!"


I blinked at her, astounded and very, very confused. I looked to my other friend. 


She shook her head; I was getting no help from her, apparently. "You should have gone to class," she told me. "You should have stuck it out. All you did was run away. You're supposed to face your problems, otherwise you'll never grow as a person."


Well, thank you, T., for deciding the future of my mental/emotional/social state for the rest of my life. I really appreciate it. NOT. 


I stammered a few things, something like, "But, you don't understand..."


"No, you don't understand. What you did was wrong. You shouldn't have quit class..."


On and on it went. For a week those two and a few others pestered me about dropping out of class. They accused my of cowardice, laziness, disparaged my integrity, and otherwise alienated me until I finally sent one of them an IM saying something along the lines of "You want to know why I @$#@$ dropped out of Drama!? Because I couldn't walking into the %^&* auditorium without !%&$# WANTING TO KILL MYSELF. 
"THAT A GOOD ENOUGH REASON FOR YOU????" 'Cept I didn't use symbols then. I used words. And let me tell you one thing: It was supremely satisfying after a week of putting up with their crap.


They got off my back after that, all of them, so I can only assume that she sent the IM around our group of friends despite her promise not to breathe a word of what I told her to anyone. I know for sure that she told her entire family, because her little sister came up to me and asked me if I was feeling okay just a few days later.

Fast forward a month or two. That other Drama friend, the one not in in class, asked me to be the sound technician for a play at a local community theater. I worked sound for two plays that year, and have since continued volunteering there, working primarily as an usher and, when called upon, a stand-in sound technician. I love doing that. It's nice. Nicer when I was the only one in my family who worked there because it was something all of my own that gave me a nice, golden-warm feeling in the vicinity of my heart, but there's nothing I can do about that now. And hey, at least now I don't have to feel bad for having them drive me there all the time, because now it's not just for me. I guess.

"Someday, I'll be living in the big old city and all you're ever gonna be is mean"—Mean, Taylor Swift

I'm learning that support groups are called 'support groups' because they are full of people who, well, are willing to support you. Not that I assume everyone at every meeting would help me when I needed it—sure, they'd call nine-one-one if I was coughing up blood or something. No, I wouldn't expect these perfect strangers—aside from one night a month—to support me. And, for the most part, I haven't needed it.

Last month's meeting was the exception.

I had woken inanely early that morning after going to sleep stupidly late (I can't recall whether the fault was my own or that of good old-fashioned insomnia) and was just generally very... off. I'd had an appointment with my psychiatist that same day, first time seeing her in months, and that had gone really well. (This was something of a surprise considering the weight of dealing with my falling-to-pieces relationship remaining firmly in the same place it had occupied for the previous month, but not so much because I've been seeing this woman for six years and she has always had the answers. Tangent, MOVING ON:  )But the issues had started before I left the house. Namely, I didn't want to leave the house, didn't want to go to the appointment I had asked for. No particular reason, I just... didn't want to.

Okay, I REALLY didn't want to. But that's not the point! The point is that I had a tenusous hold on my emptions already and just when I had decided not to go after all my dad told me that we were running so late that there wasn't time for him to drop me off before the meeting. You can probably imagine how I reacted, but for those of you who can't, here's a pretty good imitation:

-__-

That's right, people. I was Not Amused. The fact that we were late because we were at the comic book store getting my latest Power Girl graphic novel didn't mean anything. That didn't make it better. We pulled into the church and saw, what, one other car there? Right by the doors, too, not in a parking spot. But I recognized the car. My dad pulled into its usual parking spot, and I flipped. By flipped I mean I had a Grade-A 'What-the-heck-do-you-think-you're-doing-this-is-so-freakin'-wrong-Park-somewhere-else-NOW-please' OCD moment. I almost started crying. Or maybe I did start. Tears didn't actually fall, so I leave whether I was crying or not to the readers' discretion. Needless to say, my dad moved the car—he probably decided that it just wasn't worth fighting about.

Bladdee-blah, some stuff happened that I don't remember. I do remember my dad getting just a tad exasperated and walking away, conversation done. I started crying before he'd walked three feet, but that hardly matters, does it, when someone's back is turned. No. So he didn't see and I just kept crying, quietly at first, then not so quietly. (If you think I cry a lot, you are absolutely... right. Maybe.)

Luckily for me and my dignity (what little was left at that point) I noticed the approaching person before they got within three feet of the car I was huddled up in. I had just enough time to suck it up like a big girl before she kocked on the window or whatever it was she did. I opened the door and we talked. We talked about my blog; she told me she had read an commented on it and thought that it was good. I put aside my comic book and wound up the cord to my earbuds. She told me that she was very sorry I had had such a negative experience the month before and that that many people in one meeting was veritably unprecedented and they had a plan for what to do if it happened again. I unbuckled my seatbelt. She told me that she really valyued my input at the meetings and pointed out something I knew but wasn't sure anyone else had noticed: that as someone who had very recently lived through (and kind of still am, being the age I am) the trials and tribunals of school life with ADHD I had a totally different kind of advice to offer people. I turned in my seat to face her more. She told me about an awesome option available at the school I'm going to attend where I can do some volunteer work, help her out for x number of hours and actually get school credit for it or something. (Which is pretty darn awesome.) And she (unknowingly, I think) did something that my parents have been trying to figure out how to do for four years with an if-not-quite-then-very-nearly 100% rate of failure.

She talked me out of the car.

Now, I have missed many a school day simply because I was so afraid of the boig, bad world that I couldn't leave the car. (Yes people, 'paralyzed with fear' is a literal phrase, not an exaggeration. DO NOT argue with me on this. Just a friendly warning.) Getting to leave a car I have decided, even subsubsubsubsubconsciously, to stay in is next to impossible. I'm not actually sure myself what it was in all the layers of reassurance that actually got me to stand up. At some point towards the end of our conversation my dad came back outside and very, very studiously ignored the conversation (mostly).

Anyway, I went inside, chatted a little, and became very invovled with a best undisclosed number of Red Vines, a few of which I used as straws for my root beer (a surprisingly good mix) much to the amusement of those who actually registered what I was doing. More people came; people I knew! We talked. There were jokes. More people. We got down to business.

I'm learning that I really dislike the introductions. It's the same people, so I don't want to recite teh same lines and bore them, but my story is fairly simple. Each time I insert some random little factoid or tic to keep it interesting. I've been to three meetings and I'm running out of ideas. This doesn't say much for my acclaimed imagination, but hey. I may not be particulary creative, but I'd still rather eff things up myself. So I suppose I'l just figure something out at the next meeting. And at least we aren't playing name games for ice breakers. No, we just wait for someone to crack a joke. I'm finding myself quite inspired byone of the men who attends these meetings; he rambles on very coherently (though that may be the ADHD in me speaking) until his wife puts her hand on his knee and hushes him. He gets in about three more sentances before he stops, though. ;P

Past the introductions, everything went really well, I think. I mean, certain people seemed not to get the answers they were looking for, but this time I was able to buck up, gather my thoughts, and present them in a if-I-do-say-so-myself-and I-do orderly fashion with surprising ease. I answered question they didn't ask of me, because I was there and I deserve to be heard, dangnabit (don't ask, that's just how I spell it and I'm trying really hard not to swear on this blog)! o, anyway. Last months' meeting went, I think, really well. I hope that at the next one the have the same, amazingly delicious peppermint bark. Or whatever it's called.  I swear, I don't care how early it is—and I'm one of the people who refuses to listen to X-mas music until after Thanksgiving dinner is over—those things taste like freaking Christmas.  Can you say, yummy? Very good.

But yeah. Went really well, and I think that, with these people there and supporting me, even if they aren't going out of their way to do so or even realize it (unless they all read this), I'll be able to take everything in stride again. I'll be able to talk. Though admittedly, sometimes it's better I keep my mouth shut, because there are some really acidic/caustic things that come to mind at times. Not usually at the meetings though. But still. Yeah.



Random thought of the day: I'm incredibly amused (and to be honest, a bit intrigued) by the fact that I can read a 300+ page novel in two sittings, but it takes 17 hours, three locations, and no less than twelve transitions from sitting to laying down and back again to finish a single publication of Cosmo. And I don't read all of it (some so-called articles are just too mind-numbing)! I guess it's that whole selective focus thing?

Ja na!

"I will never stop wanting what I don't have." —Lost in Yonkers, Act II

I intend to tackle some (okay, one) of my more painful questions. This is pretty much just an exploration of my crazy brain. Of my memories. And if they've lead to something that I consider one of my 'most painful questions' it's pretty clear that these don't have happy endings. This really doesn't have anything to do with CHADD, but I don't see any reason to make a whole new blog just for my introspective emo time. Read if you want, don't if you don't. Simple, isn't it?

Also, I realize that in the previous post I begin as though in the middle of a conversation. There is one simple reason for that: I started writing this one first.
________________________________________________

When--where?--did I learn that I am replaceable? Not in the way of every human being is a small piece of the whole, but in the way of "I'll never be as good as the next model". I won't. There is always some-one or -thing that is better than me by just enough to be worth dropping me right then and there and moving on with the newer improved model.

Maybe I should start with the earliest example in my memory, the one that started it all. Yes, Julie Andrews, the beginning is a very good place to start.


When I was five years old my family moved to Oregon from Florida. We drove across the country in fourteen days. When we reached Oregon, I was tired and it was night. We were met by my uncle and led to the house where we would be staying with my mom's sister, her husband, and their six children. I didn't meet anyone during that time who hadn't known my cousins first. Not anyone. When we finally moved out, both families were relieved. A week or two, maybe more, after we settled in, I was at the front door of our house, the aptly named Haven, and saw a girl walking across the street. I asked my dad if it was okay, then walked over to her and said "Hi!". We struck up a conversation and she became my first official friend in Oregon that I met and made by myself.

I was six years old. She was ten, and I didn't care. I was just too happy. But there was one concern: now I had someone to play with and my sister didn't. So I got my sister, and I introduced them. And the three of us were friends. She introduced us to her family, her little brothers and sisters, and we would play together. It lasted like that for a long time.

But nothing lasts forever, and as the undeniable youngest of our core trio, I was eventually cut out of things, little by little. Bit by bit. Though we stuck together when the bullies on our street were around, I was the weakest and both my sister and out friend knew it. And they used it. I remember that at one point I was going to ride my bike home, but one of them got in front of me--not just blocking the way, but physically holding my bike in place. I sat there on my bike, pedaling away while she made fun of me until I cried. Then she let me go.


Fast forward: I've just turned eleven, and at the last Girl Scout camp my sister and I attended we met someone else who loved Sailor Moon. My sister had just started to draw, and I had not yet begun to write fanfiction. But the three of us got along famously, for our love of Japanese cartoons eclipsed all else. But she and I had something else in common, something that connected to two of us in a special way: she had ADD. Still does. The three of us were fast friends, with my sister being the eldest and I, once again, the youngest. In fact, we saw each other almost every day that summer, and during that time we decided we would make a film. We would write it, direct, produce, act... we each had out own trademark characters. I was Meg. I had brown hair with blue tips and I could control water and time. My boyfriend was Ryan.

Then we decided our characters needed theme songs. So we looked at anime music video after anime music video (AMV). And they each found one, and I found one. and then my sister decided that she wanted mine—Iris, by the Goo-Goo-Dolls. I could have hers, she promised. And since I had originally wanted Rose in the Wind by Anggun... but no. I liked Iris too much to give it up. Then our friend took her side, and never, ever went back to the middle ground. She got her song, all right. But the three of us kept hanging out. We still spent a lot of time together; we were a trio, after all. Little by little and bit by bit I, the youngest in the group, was pushed away and ignored.

For the next three years I was referred to as "wall".

My sister introduced her to some other friends she had made and together they began working on a marvelous story, the telling of which lasted until after they had graduated high school. The characters that they used were from our movie. I was not permitted to play. I was too young and too uncool. And then, on the weekends, when my sister and I would have played together or watched TV, she went over there and they played. I realized that she preferred their company to mine, and that she didn't love me anymore. And sometimes my sister's friend's mother, my mom's best friend, would invite both of us over, and I would go because I loved that house and that family.

I would go into my old friend's room and sit against the wall next to her closet. I wrote, read, and drew a lot in those days. I spoke very little.

I had spent two years trying to get them to like me, and it had never worked. I had done everything they told me to do and then some. I had been funny, supportive, and obedient. Eventually I stopped spending time with the pair and the group of them. If I was forced to go visit on holidays and other such events, I avoided them. I went to room they weren't in. I sat downstairs in the family room, the art room, the TV room, the quilting room. I sat under a table in a corner, in the dark. I had been doing that for months before her mother noticed. They never made me go back.

The movie, of course, never happened.


As this was going on, I had entered middle school and made a whole new group of friends. Why a new group? Simple answer: my old friends had all bonded very closely with the people I introduced them to, because as a rule I never introduced people who I didn't think would get along. In fact, they had bonded so closely that they had begun ignoring me altogether. With my new friends and my fresh stat, I was sure to be happy.

But I wasn't, because when you make friends from six different social groups and you want to spend time with them all at once, you have to introduce them. And they all got along.


Freshman year I went to a different school. I had one friend, a girl I had been in a play with the year before. Two weeks into the school year, she had met another girl. A popular girl, one who she had classes with. Ignoring the fact that I was in all those same classes, she ignored me.

Sophomore year, I'm back to school with my middle school friends, and I learn that they're friends with my sister. My best friend was the only person who kept me sane, because he kept me with him and as such with the rest of the group. It was slow-going, but I was once again among friends. My friends. Not my sisters. I admit though, during that time I did my fair share of befriending her best friends, too. Not out of spite, but because they were such honestly nice and interesting people.

I'll say no more on my social life in high school, because it is just as chaotic and painful and traumatizing as you might imagine. Thing fell apart. And I was replaced, little by little and bit by bit. Time and time again. I can safely say that I was replaced more times than I had friends who could replace me, because I just kept forgiving them. I just wanted them to like me. But I'll never be as good as the next model.


_________________________________________________

So maybe, just maybe, that's why I think I'm replaceable. Not in the way of all humans are, but in the way of the iPod Micro. Do you remember it? No? Most people don't.

It was replaced.

Ja na.

"Sometimes living on the up-and-up means being on the down-and-down." --Lost in Yonkers, Act II

As for the last CHADD meeting I went to, the one where beforehand I was nervous and tense and didn't want to go? Somehow, looking back, I feel that those feelings were justified. I don't feel that I contributed very much to the last meeting. In fact, I felt downright unwanted. Let me describe the scene for you:

Same small church room with the same small stage at the end opposite the doors. This time my dad and I sat facing it. And this time, instead of seven people, there were about, what? Fourteen? Me, dad, the woman next to me, the man next to her, his wife... One, two, three, five, six-seven, eight, nine, ten-eleven, thirteen, fourteen. (Wow I'm good. -Ish.) Anyway, all these people! And not just people. They're all legitimately grown-ups. And there I am, eighteen and two months to the day, and very obviously out of place at what was clearly a parents and grown-ups meeting.

Now, while I may be 18, and I may consider myself (mostly) an adult, that does not by any stretch of the imagination mean that I am "grown-up". Grown-ups have at least seven and a half more years of life experience than I do. Minimum. Of course, even beyond that there is a case-by-case basis.

So what was I doing there? These people (almost?) all had children with ADHD. I still am a child with ADHD. Sort of. Yes, I'm a babysitter. Yes, I'm a Girl Scout. Yes, I'm just as comfortable talking to people older than me as I am with those my own age (sometimes, I think, even more so). These were the thoughts racing through my mind, and there was nothing for me to do, nothing for me to contribute. And then, every time there was that little glimmer of realization that I have something worthwhile to say, I would feel like I was catching sight of someone who was staring at me, as though asking the same questions I already had earlier: what's a child doing here? I was unwanted I was a burden, I was superfluous.

I left the room. I went outside and walked around the parking lot trying not to cry because I hate being unwanted. [More on that in the next post.] Then I started noticing things; there was wind and people walking their dogs, and what on earth breed was that strange little fuzzy thing on a leash across the street? I let my mind wander, embraced the careless, distracted part of me that I had gone there to talk about.

And I did it silently, so no one noticed. I went back inside and listened to every word, piping in every now and then, usually when people were discussing something I had a strong opinion on. Beyond that though, I sat there, half-fuming, half-despairing, all wondering what I could do to feel more involved without feeling like I was interrupting a conversation between teachers/parents/camp counselors/doctors/other miscellaneous authority figures.

If it had been a smaller group, I would have just spoken up and told them that I was feeling awkward. I can be blunt like that, when I'm not feeling like I'm crashing a party with masks and ballgowns and no princes to be seen.

Ja na!

"Okay, introduction time!"—Hikaru Shindo, MKR

I got the idea for this when I attended my first support group meeting, which, I must say, was extremely beneficial (the meeting, not the idea). By 'this' I mean, of course, a blog that relates my experiences with ADHD. Namely my own. At some point in the last two weeks, though, it occurred to me, 'Why stop there?'—because that isn't my only 'thing'. 

No, I lucked into my own particular brand of alphabet soup. Right along with ADHD comes OCD and potential ODD (my parents and doctors were never quite clear on that one so I don't know for sure), and, of course, a few intimidating phrases that merrily strolled into my life after I turned twelve. 

Clinical depression. Panic disorder. Anxiety attacks. 

There there are my tongue-twisters: Entomophobia. Haptephobia. Amaxophobia. Kosmikophobia. Needless to say, I've had a lot of therapists in my comparatively short life. And I think they would support this venture of mine. 

On another, happier note, I write. I write because I am a writer, like other people are leaders or are teachers or are historians. It's not just what I do, it's what I am, down to the very last speck of protein in my eyelashes. If you're really all that interested, I do have some of my writing posted online, at fanfiction.net—one of my favorite sites. Which does mean that I often write things based on ideas others have had first, such as my favorite show, One Piece. I write a lot of OP fiction. 

I fully intend to be a published novelist, which brings me to another point: I have no issues with my given name, but It's too long and not all that catchy. The name I use on ff.net is Yumi, though that is not my full user-name. Delia Dawn in the pseudonym I intend to use once published.

I must say, I haven't decided yet if I'll tell the woman in the support group about this. I may; I may not.

Let's see how it goes from here.

Ja na!