"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.