Adventures in ADHD

A few months ago, a couple of articles on ADHD crossed my Facebook feed. One of them was this one, and it changed my life.

The odd thing is, I already had a diagnosis. I'd just never considered that it might still be relevant.

I was diagnosed with ADD (they made a distinction in those days) when I was about 10, I don't remember the year precisely. It was only picked up because my younger brother was your classic hyperactive white boy, and the diagnosing psychiatrist figured he might as well take a look at the daydreamy big sister as well.

I took ritalin for four years, but as I grew into teenagehood I began to resent it as one of the many things - strong working mum, gyprock kit home, avant garde childrearing, not using the titles Mum and Dad and, as I entered my mid-teens, now-divorced parents - that made me not normal. I wanted to be normal, and I didn't want to see the psychiatrist any more, so I stopped taking ritalin. I can remember that my Dad kind of shrugged; I don't even remember a conversation about it with my Mum.

When my grades collapsed throughout year 10, people blamed my parents' divorce and the disruption of changing homes and schools.

When I had to repeat year 12, people blamed me for not studying, with slight concession to the fact that I was being frequently woken by my baby sister.

When I moved out at 18 and almost immediately descended into housekeeping chaos, people couldn't understand why I was such a slob.

When I pulled high distinction essays out of my hat at 3am on the day before they were due, people asked me again and again why I didn't do things in advance, and it was like they were speaking Klingon.

When I entered the professional workforce and just could not cope with staying on task, I hid what was going on so carefully that everyone except my one archaeology boss and colleagues thought I'd genuinely had a change of heart about my career path, rather than having destroyed my dream career through misuse of work time, disorganisation, and the inability to deal with workplace behaviour.

When I racked up debt in my mid-20s people shook their heads and adjured me to be more careful.

When my housekeeping never got any better, people were embarrassed for me.

When I couldn't stay on top of things as a teacher, I covered it up again and again and loathed my disorganisation and laziness.

When I blurted things out or spoke too loud or babbled too much I thought I was socially awkward, and blamed myself for not being more restrained.

When I dropped and trod on and walked into and wrong-footed and couldn't organise my body in order to get things done, I thought I was clumsy, careless and hasty, and hated my body.

When I couldn't stop the endless desire to eat, I thought I was a glutton and despised my weakness.

That was the litany of who I was: careless, lazy, gauche, greedy, clumsy, hasty, incompetent, slob.

Not once, in all this time, did I ever ask, "Is this ADHD?"

Not once, in all this time, did anyone who knew I'd had the diagnosis ever ask, "Is this ADHD?"

I am angry occasionally, but mostly what I feel is bewilderment. Looking back, it's so obvious; I have no idea why I didn't figure it out. I just can't fathom it. I'm smart. I'm educated. I have access to a world of research at my fingertips and have done for nearly two decades. I knew I'd had the diagnosis as a kid. Why did it never occur to me to ask whether my complete failure to "adult" was simply a logical extension of the 10-year-old daydreamer with the messy desk tray and habit of staring through her classmates?

When I read the article I linked above, something finally clicked.

Then came a ten minute consultation with my GP.

An hour with a mental health nurse in which I sobbed over wounds whose pain I hadn't ever acknowledged.

Half an hour with a sweet, gentle mental health doctor, and a screening test in which my 'impairments' were laid bare in dozens of tick-boxes.

Two ECGs (the first one wasn't plugged in properly).

One blood test.

And then I was in the pharmacy holding a small green piece of paper with my sweet mental health doctor's instructions laid out in neat capital letters.

Methylphenidate.



I've been on it for just over two weeks now. At first, I was taking a dose in the morning and a dose at midday, necessitating the carrying of it in a miniature combi-lock safe during my work day. Now I'm taking the full dose in the morning, and in two weeks the dose will go up again. So far, concentration is a little better at work, housework has become astonishingly trivial, I've actually been to the gym, and I just don't care that much about food. Suddenly I'm cooking dinner every night (or organising one of the others to cook it) and taking lunch every day. Chocolate has sat uneaten in the cupboard and I don't even care. I can cook a whole meal without getting bored and wandering off.

It's weird.

IT'S WEIRD.

Is this how normal people experience life?


It's, um, pretty cool.

On Trout, and Memories

When I was growing up, one of my eccentric maternal grandfather's hobbies was farming trout in the creek that ran through my grandparents' property in the Perth hills. I have many vivid memories of this setup: the netting around the enclosures, the smell of the big bin of trout food (very similar to kitten kibble!), the texture of the pole on the long-handled nets we used to catch them, the yellow of the fish innards when they were being gutted for cooking. Sometimes we'd catch, cook and eat them at my grandparents' house; other times, we'd be sent home with cleaned trout ready for cooking.

Inextricably linked with trout is the smell of lemon thyme, which grew in our herb garden and was always the herb of choice when Mum cooked the trout. It smells of warm evenings and sounds like honey bees and cicadas. It's one of the fundamental memory scents of my childhood home.

I was unexpectedly taken back there yesterday in Tesco, half a world away, when I came across a bunch of fresh lemon thyme in the herb section. It's so rare to see lemon thyme in the shops that I leapt at it, then sensibly put it back, saying to Ellie that we'd see whether they had trout at the fish counter first.

They did have trout, both whole and filleted. At the end of our shopping list, and in possession of two trout fillets, we went back for the lemon thyme... and it was gone.

I actually fought back tears, absurdly enough, but consoled myself with the thought of thyme and slices of lemon as a close second. We grabbed a lemon and headed for the checkout.

Naturally, seven hours later when we came to cook dinner, Ellie called me into the kitchen with a chagrined expression: the thyme we both thought was in the cupboard was not there. We must have run out without either of us putting it on the shopping list, I guess. Thwarted again.

So, I ended up having mixed herb and lemon trout, and yes, it was delicious. But next time I'm grabbing the lemon thyme first!

I had wanted to put up a photograph of Whistlepipe Gully where it runs through my grandparents' property, but it seems I don't have one. Instead, this is my family's herb garden in Glen Forrest, Western Australia, circa 1991.

Awen

Awen (noun): poetic inspiration. From the Indo-European root *-uel, meaning 'to blow'.

I love the concept of awen. A wind blowing through your soul, bringing inspiration in its wake. I've only recently discovered the term, in reading about modern Druidic tradition amongst many other explorations of pagan paths. It immediately spoke to me, like few other concepts in any tradition have ever done. I know that feeling intimately, and seeking it forms a big part of my own search for a spiritual identity. For me, without spirituality there is no awen, and without awen there is no spirituality. The sense of connectedness and transcendence is something I have sought since I was young.

Music has always been one of my sources of awen. When listening I find it in music of all genres, from classical to new age to Enya to ordinary pop/rock ("Solsbury Hill" by Peter Gabriel and "Steer" by Missy Higgins are perfect examples). I also find moments of it when singing or playing an instrument in a group - those moments of transcendence when the ensemble combines perfectly and the music itself seems to come to life. It's one of the major reasons why I still love Anglican church services - there is a magic in massed voices that defies artificial boundaries between faiths.

The natural world, and its weather and the turning of its seasons, has always been my biggest source of awen, and it is what led me to paganism. Red berries against a blue sky, sunlight across the plains, a crayfish scuttling under a riverbank, the wind in my hair, mist rolling up a valley, thunder on a hot night, the first frost of autumn... when I am out there in the natural world, awen is everywhere.

Of course, the man-made world is not without awen either. Buildings that are old or odd or quirky. Artworks I like for no better reason than that they speak to my soul. (Here is one - I have seen the original in the Tate and was captivated). Crafts that are nifty or cute. An uplifting book scene or a really clever joke. When I open myself to it, awen is everywhere.

My desire to write fiction has been driven by childhood experiences of awen. It was lacking in my real life - we were not a religious family - and my main sources of it, then as now, were music, nature and stories. My formative years were shaped by books and stories told in electronic media that blew into my soul, inspiring me to act them out, extemporise, adapt and retell over and over again out in the half-acre scrap of garden and bushland that was my childhood temple. All of the books I've tried to write and the stories I've tried to tell have contained elements of this raw need to channel, create, inspire and share the sensation of awen.

Age 9, glowing with inspiration

 I've been thinking about this a lot lately, as I try yet again to put words on paper, or on screen as it is these days (and perhaps that's part of the problem). The wind of inspiration blows into me, and I come alive with the thought of the story I have to tell. I envisage it whole in my head, see it, feel it, live it out in little scenes in my mind, but when the words reach the page they seem to lose their sparkle. How do I maintain that sense of wonder, and the fierce spirit of inspiration? How do I keep the fire of awen burning for the weeks, months and years it takes to craft a novel? How do you keep your spirit glowing with purpose when you're burdened with money worries, or the toddler is being irrational, or when the housework never seems to be finished? How do you teach your heart to be open to awen every moment of every day? Not just for novel writing, but for teaching, and cooking, and keeping house, and nurturing my loved ones, and hoping and believing and growing?


What are your sources for awen (or whatever you would choose to call it)? What reminds you that it's good to be alive, or feeds your creative fires? Where do you get your inspiration?

Abandonment

When you’re wrapped up in a lifelong depressive dysfunctional mess, it’s very hard to focus on any particular problem. There’s so much swirling crazy noise that you can’t hear yourself think.

As you work through grief and start to heal, some of the noise subsides, and you can hear other parts of it more clearly.

Lately, I've found that the noise of inadequacy and inferiority has settled to a low hum, allowing me to hear less pressing issues more clearly. And the one that’s shouting the loudest is abandonment.

I’ve been reluctant to call anything in my life experience “abandonment” until now – that good old feeling of inferiority tells me that my problems are not bad enough to warrant attention – but the fact is that my reactions scream “abandonment issues”, so regardless of whether I deserve them, I've got them.

I don’t know exactly what in my past has caused me to freak out when I think someone is physically or emotionally deserting me. There are some strong candidates: my mother going back to work when I was 4; mother’s decision to leave the marriage when I was 13; my father’s crazy-cakes behaviour with his first post-marriage girlfriend the same year; my whole family’s tendency to emotionally ‘check out’ and withdraw love during conflict. I suspect it’s all of these things together.

The only time I remember having an abandonment-specific reaction is during my father’s tumultuous relationship, when he did literally abandon my brother and I by disappearing to go and see the girlfriend in the middle of the night, and ultimately by handing custody of us over to my mother because he couldn’t cope with both the girlfriend and us. That abandonment stung, and I still get upset thinking of one night when I had the ‘flu and woke up vomiting and alone because my father had gone off again. However, although that had a powerful effect on me, the way I react to perceived abandonment now bears more resemblance to how I react to my mother’s withdrawal tactics during arguments.

The way I want to react to perceived abandonment is pretty flaily and crazy-making. If I feel like someone has pulled away from me, or is shutting me out, or has gone non-responsive, I feel panicky. I want to get their attention and reassurance as fast as possible. I want to talk to them, message them, email them, hound them to get reassurance that they’re not abandoning me. If it goes on too long I start to get angry… I want to provoke them, annoy them, get them to argue with me: anything to get them to notice me. If it becomes too emotionally charged I start to want to do dramatic things. I have never self-harmed but I’ve fantasized about it, or wished I could be severely injured or sick so that people would “be sorry”. These thoughts were rife in my teenage years (I think that’s not uncommon) but I still occasionally find them cropping up when I feel abandoned.

As you can see, the whole thing is a pretty crazy reaction that can lead to a sharp downwards spiral.

I’ve become very conscious and critical of these abandonment reactions lately. I don’t want to be someone who drives friends and loved ones crazy with constant pestering for reassurance. I know I’ve pestered people in the past. I also know that some people (probably unconsciously) have used my need for reassurance to deliberately keep me off-balance or to ‘punish’ me. Both of those are good reasons to get the reactions sorted out.

I can control the reaction – several times lately I’ve had to sit on my hands and not flail to deal with a person’s apparent (or in a couple of cases, actual) withdrawal. I’m proud that I haven’t gone off the deep end on any of these occasions, and have only outwardly reacted by mentioning one or two of these events on this blog. But inside – there’s a weepy, flaily abandonment-fearing crazyperson wanting to get out. There have been tears when no one is looking, and a lot of hand-sitting and attempts at self-soothing to stop myself from going nuts.

That’s what I’d like to try to do next – get those internal reactions under control. To feel okay about people pulling away, and accept the comings and goings (whether actual or imagined) calmly without feeling like my world will fall apart if I can’t get a person to acknowledge me right away. I’m not quite sure where to start, but it’s something I’ll be doing a lot of thinking about over the next few weeks.

Being Bi

A couple of weeks ago, in the throes of election angst, I got into a spat with an acquaintance about whether sexuality is a choice or a predetermined part of one's nature. The context was a meme that was going around that highlights the absurdity of anti-gay marriage sentiments, and in the course of the argument she tried to tell me that my parents' unhappy marriage is the reason why I have chosen bisexuality as an adult.

Surprisingly, for me, I didn't blow my stack and rain down eloquent fire upon her head; just calmly pointed out the fallacies in her assumptions. But it's got me thinking a lot about my experience of growing up bisexual.

I was a very sheltered child, and had very little access to (or interest in) popular culture. I didn't listen to the radio; my TV intake was carefully monitored and approved; my mother read no magazines; and while our house was full of books, those that were not children's books were limited to sci fi, fantasy and old-school whodunnits. In a pre-internet world I simply had no access to anything beyond a vanilla, heteronormative world-view.

Around the ages of 5-7, kids go through a first stage of having "boyfriends" and "girlfriends" as they begin to mimic adult relationships. I had a "boyfriend" during this phase, because I was a girl. But I can also distinctly remember becoming emotionally attached to female friends. If they had been boys, these attachments would have been crushes.

Boy-girl relations broke off for a while after that, as my year group passed through the "boy / girl germs" stage. Around age 10 they picked up again and began to look like real relationships on the upswing towards puberty. Here, again, I knew when I was crushing on a particular boy, but couldn't explain the way I became attached to other girls. There was no sexual or particularly physical element at this age (no more than there was with the boys!), just an overwhelming desire for closeness. I would become enamoured of the way a particular girl looked, spoke, moved, thought; and I'd want to hold on to that somehow.

Sometime around this age I learned about homosexuality. One of my aunts was openly lesbian and my family were accepting of the fact. I was never given any negative or judgemental attitudes about homosexuality, and certainly never remember being bothered by it. I knew I was attracted to boys, so I never considered applying the label to myself.

As I progressed through my (still extremely sheltered) high school years, the boy-crushes and girl-crushes continued apace. I was very shy, anxious and socially inept, and often longed to get close to female friends but had no idea how to manage it. I was occasionally accused of being a lesbian, partly because I didn't have the social skills to attract boys and thus didn't date; and partly because I would often blush and stutter when talking to girls whom, had I known it, I found attractive.

It wasn't until I finally hit university that I learned about bisexuality. Between the liberal-minded university environment, access to my own TV and the advent of the internet, I became aware of the fact that people could 'swing both ways'. Unfortunately, I was also exposed to someone - I don't remember who, or where, or why - opining that girls who came out as bi were just looking for attention. How I wish I'd never heard that!

I can quite clearly remember the moment when I realised that the label 'bisexual' was mine. I was 19. It was the day after I'd had an explicit dream about my then-best-friend, who I had been close to since high school; and it was around the same time as I'd had an overwhelming urge to work a lesbian character into a book I was writing, and write a sex scene for her. I was lying there in bed puzzling over these two facts, when it hit me.

OH. 


DUH.


"I'm bisexual".

Unfortunately for the me of the next 10 years, I decided right away that no-one could ever know. Firstly, I thought I'd be accused of attention-seeking and drama (I felt the same way about asking for help with persistent depression; keeping my head down and my mouth shut was a common theme for me). Secondly, I wanted A Husband And Kids, and I "knew" that allowing myself to become involved with a girl would mean giving those things up for ever.

So I buried the knowledge deep. The crushes didn't go away, but now I actively pretended that they were just "intense friendships". I remember one class in third year in which I had two crushes - "Jolly Tammy" and "Dainty Diana", I called them - and wondering how I could change the chatty in-class friendships into something stronger and closer. I couldn't accept or acknowledge my desire to be with girls, but I couldn't stop the feelings.

This was the status quo throughout my 20s. Crushes, male and female, came and went. I had a few relationships with men (mostly unsatisfying and/or unpleasant), and a few long stretches without. I considered listing myself as bisexual on dating sites; I occasionally described myself as "bi-curious", "slightly more towards the bi end of the scale" or "bi but not actively so" to people I only knew on the internet. But I was far, far too scared of the consequences to ever own up to it in my real life. Or so I thought.

Late last year I made a new friend, who shares many of my opinions and values, and whom I respect a great deal. And she announced her bisexuality on her blog. This began a watershed for me. Another friend whom I'd met at the same time was a young woman I found intoxicating. I really, really wanted to be with her. I had not enquired about her sexuality, and she had a boyfriend besides. But between those two elements, something snapped. It took several months to work up the courage, but I came out. First to the friend who is also bi, secondly to my brother, then here on my blog, and then slowly to friends and family as it became relevant or necessary.

(It's not entirely relevant to the story, but... the intoxicating young lady read my blog, and it turned out that she is bi too [and thought I knew!] and a week after I came out I spent an evening kissing her... it was a brief interlude as I left for London at the end of that week, but it still sparkles in my mind as one of the most breathtaking experiences of my life).

Of everyone I've told about my bisexuality, only one person has had an "aha, I thought so!" reaction. He too is bi, and had picked up, to my delight, the blushing-at-girls thing. I spent so many years disclaiming that as "I just blush when I laugh!" and it was funny and wonderful to find that someone had pegged its true cause.

So here I am, a lifelong bisexual woman who is finally comfortable in her own skin. I've got friends who are fine with my sexuality (having shed those who are not), I have a boyfriend who is also bisexual, and I've got enough confidence to know that my family can like it or lump it and I'll be fine (so far they've been fine or neutral, thank goodness).

When it comes to the question of sexuality being a choice... no. If a sheltered 5-year-old can unknowingly identify as bisexual, then any adult who claims it's a lifestyle decision can go jump in a lake, with my compliments. It's not. It never has been, and it never will be.

BROADBAND!

Thank goodness!

School is still going well - I'm not quite getting my food and water right though so I'm coming home very hungry and often dehydrated. Need to figure that out.

I'm finding some contrasts between Montessori and state schools amusing, in a must-laugh-not-cry way. State schools, by and large, have as sterile and controlled an environment as possible, and a long list of "don'ts" aimed at avoiding any possible source of injury or dirt (don't run, don't climb, don't throw, don't play with sticks . . .). And then the classes devote considerable time to activities that develop children's gross motor skills - the running, skipping, hopping, jumping, turning, stopping, throwing, catching stuff. At the Montessori school there's as few "don'ts" as possible. The kids run on the bitumen, climb trees, pick fruit from them and eat it, play in the dirt, climb all over things . . . they even have a flying fox (not one of these tame playground ones, but one you sit on!) which they can use at lunchtime. They do everything kids have traditionally done for fun.

And the school doesn't need to run gross motor skills programmes. The kids don't need classes in it because they get that just by being kids in the playground. Funny that. Typical of the state system to ban everything that develops gross motor skills then insist on classes to develop them in a controlled environment!

Too headachey to blog properly, but all is well :)

Disassociation

The brain does very weird things sometimes.

Hornets (aka huntsman wasps or spider-killing wasps - big-ass waspy things) are one of the few insects I really can't deal with. Most I'm quite comfortable with or can at least handle with a minimum of fuss. But hornets - especially the slim ones, that are shaped like a normal wasp but twice the size - give me the creeping horrors. I scream and run away from them like I scream and run away from nothing else.

Yesterday I was thinking about this, and wondering why. I cast my memory back over various events involving wasps and hornets, and the only thing I could come up with was when I saw my cousin Vanessa get stung by small wasps when I was about 14.

Except . . . something about the memory was off. I "knew" it had been Vanessa that got stung, but I could remember the flailing from my own perspective. What?

So I sent my brother an email, and he confirmed that it was me that got stung by the wasps. Vanessa was there, along with our friends from across the road, Shane, Donna and Sarah; but I was the only one that got stung. For some reason, since then I'd altered the memory, disassociated myself from being the victim and put my cousin in that role instead.

I wonder why on earth I did that?

There's one other occasion from my childhood when I know I disassociated a memory. When I was about 11, my friend Erin and I were mucking around in the kitchen, "cooking" (which usually meant either screwing up and wasting ingredients, or getting bored and giving up halfway through). We'd opened a can of something, and from what I remembered, Erin cut her thumb on the edge of the can, right across the knuckle, and it was rather scary and bled everywhere. It was years and years later that I suddenly went "wait a second, the scar from that is on MY THUMB". It's still there today, for that matter. One slightly jagged cut scar, right across the knuckle of my left thumb. But at some point my brain had gone "do not want" and started telling me that it was Erin's thumb that got cut, not mine.

It makes you wonder what else in one's memory isn't real! *cue Matrix soundtrack*

And I still haven't figured out why I'm so scared of hornets in particular. Maybe it is just simply the fact that they're big, solitary, unfazed by most attempts to kill them, and they come at you at head height with malice aforethought. That's enough, right?

Growing Again

As you all know, I'm a big fan of Getting Past Your Past. Today's entry was this guest blog, which is one reader's suggestion on how to deal with the inner voice that harps on about how much one is unloved, unwanted, unsatisfied etc. The blogger suggests that instead of the validating "there there, I know!" responses most of us give ourselves, we should actually just meet those needs. Nevermind that they were not met by someone else in our past: meet them, now. Give that voice nothing to complain about.

WOW.

I cried when reading it, and later realised that, in an unconscious way, I've just done exactly that.

When we were kids and teens, my brother and I were both miserable at school, but we expressed it in different ways. I withdrew, he acted out. His way of asking for help was recognised, and he got switched between schools fairly regularly in an attempt to find the best environment for him. My way of asking for help wasn't actually noticed, ever. My parents never once came sailing in and dragged me out of a school I hated then hunted around for a better environment for me. They didn't know I wanted them to.

That rankled for a long time, and there were echoes of that in my distress throughout this year. "I hate the state school system, I'm so miserable, why won't someone come and rescue ME . . .". But someone did rescue me. I rescued me. I realised I couldn't stay in that environment, I found an alternative and I hauled myself out of one and into the other. It doesn't matter that it was me who came along and helped me when I needed it. Someone noticed, and someone did something about it.

I did need someone to rescue me. But it turned out that someone was me. Fancy that!

Three Reunions, Three Lessons.

I had the last of my three 10-year high school reunions yesterday. It was a fantastic night and I really enjoyed it. I guess I'm now used to the whole reunion thing as I wasn't nervous at all for this one! That also comes from sorting through a lot of my "stuff". My self-esteem did not depend on the night going well, and since it did I just feel better about myself!

On the way home, I reflected on the three different reunions and the emotions and self-beliefs that surrounded each one. Like most teenagers my high school years were fraught with dramas and traumas, and being an Aspie with difficult and divorced parents I had perhaps a harder time than many dealing with the trials of teenagehood. In some ways, the reunions have let me 'go back' and fix some of the things that were going wrong. I've learned an important lesson out of each of the reunions - a different lesson each time.

Before the first reunion, for EHSHS, I was incredibly nervous. I was only at EHSHS for Years 8 and 9 (1993-94) and didn't really feel like I had any right to be going. I also had to get there very late, because my uncle's wedding reception was the same night. I was convinced that only a couple of people would remember me, and that they would probably wonder what I was doing there since I hadn't graduated with them. I even asked the people running it whether I was allowed to go!

When I got there, I was immediately greeted with great excitement by dozens of old friends and acquaintances. Most didn't even remember that I hadn't been there the whole time, or alternatively had wondered where the hell I'd gone since my friends hadn't managed to pass on the fact that I'd been custody-shuffled up to the northern suburbs. I was hugged by people I barely remembered, and "glomped" by a few who had really missed me. It was wonderful and I went home feeling like I'd regained a whole portion of my life that went missing after I left EHSHS.

Lesson One: You Are Memorable. I am not background noise. My appearance and manner and personality leaves a pleasant memory that people can retrieve immediately. I am missed when I leave and welcomed when I return. I don't need to fear being forgotten or unnoticed.

The next reunion was for GSHS where I did Years 10-12 (1995-97) after going to live with Mum. Before the GSHS reunion I felt even worse than I did prior to the first one. I was very much unpopular at GSHS (my friends were all in the year below me because my own year didn't 'get' me). I felt again like I had no right to be there and would be teased / laughed at / shunned for turning up to the reunion when I was so unwelcome at the school in the first place. I was terribly nervous.

What I found, when I got there, was that everyone remembered me, and no one remembered that I'd been unpopular. People kept asking things like "oh, were you at that party where . . .", and I kept having to say "no, I wasn't", thinking all the while ". . . because you guys never once invited me to a party!". They didn't have any recollection of my status as class pariah, and welcomed me with open arms and great enthusiasm. I hadn't been one of the crowd, but all they remembered was that I had been there through the most important years of high school. That was all that mattered to them.

Lesson Two: You Are Acceptable. Kids in high school are stupidly obsessed with conformity. My oddness was unbearable to them back then, but they're adults and they're over it. The person I am today is acceptable to the people they are today. I am not a pariah and no one sees me as one. I am accepted as one of "them".

This weekend's reunion was for FSHS, where I repeated Year 12 in 1998, having gone back to live with Dad at his new house in a different suburb after stuffing up my tertiary entrance exams in 1997. I wasn't nervous for this one - I knew that T, a good friend of mine, would be there, and I had better memories of the people at FSHS in general. I was pretty sure I was going to be welcomed, and hoped I would also be remembered.

The evening was delightful. Most people remembered me (some after a bit of prompting lol), and if they remembered me as half of "Christine and Brett", well, that's fair enough! Most were quite fascinated by the path my life had taken, and I found I had a lot in common with many of the girls I spent the evening with. It was a really great night.

Lesson Three: You Are Respected. People think very highly of someone who has three degrees, who followed her dream to do archaeology, who made a sensible decision to get out when it wasn't working out, and who does such an undeniably difficult and underpaid job as primary school teaching. In fact, the stuff I can do seriously amazes people, even if I consider them far brighter than me! So far as mannerisms can tell the story, everyone remembered liking me at school, and many remembered my dream to do archaeology. I am seen as someone who has achieved, who has strived, who has Gone Somewhere and Done Something with her life. No one cares about what I don't have or thinks less of me for it. What I do have is sufficient.

At last night's reunion I also had a long chat to my high school sweetheart (the aforementioned Brett), who was there with his wife and child. I found that, for the first time since we broke up in 2000, chatting to Brett triggered none of my "stuff". I think I'm starting to get my head around my past and put it away.

The three reunions have helped to set right a number of misconceptions I had about myself, and have replaced them with the positives listed above. And that feels good!

Trying to keep trying

I'm not feeling good today. I'm getting over this bug, mostly, but I still feel sort of off-colour and drained.

When I get stressed I recycle a lot of anger at the world - non-specific, undirected anger that stems from the problems and challenges of my childhood. I'm feeling a lot of pressure and anxiety at the moment with reports coming up and the financial pressures of Christmas requiring a juggling act. I'm also experiencing a lot of loneliness and dissatisfaction with being single. I know I need to make peace with that, build my own life etc but right now I'm in an I-just-don't-care-I-want-a-family state. I don't know how to deal with myself when I'm like that! I know part of it is just the virus-imposed weepiness masquerading as cluckiness, and of course parts of me are going to be reacting to the fact that so, so many of my friends are pregnant (including the announcements by two of my close friends from primary school *sigh*).

Some of the feelings are real and some are just reactions, and I do know that I need to work through the issues that make me feel that way. I need to let go of the anger at past events, and let go of the negativity that I attach to being different, stop comparing myself and just let my life be what it is, when it is. I need to put aside the frustration and just enjoy what I've got, but it's hard, and I'll admit that a part of me is resisting. The misery and depression are oh-so-familiar, and soothing in their own way. Living healthily and positively involves giving up the security blanket of depression and self-deprecation, and that's scary.

So I'm trying to just keep on trying, keep on wanting to get healthy, and not fall into my old ways. I'm trying to find some behaviour to replace sitting on the couch crying over the things I want and don't have, which doesn't involve spending a lot of money. Hmm.

Changing Hurts.

Growing pains of the soul and mind are no less painful than those of the body.

At the moment I'm digging deep into my childhood, doing the work I need to do to understand why I get pulled into negative relationships time and time again. Part of the answer is the straightforward issue of being an Aspie growing up in a neurotypical word which has given me a desperate need to belong, to be normal, to be seen as fitting in. Sticking with bananaheads because being in a grown-up relationship made me one of the "real people" is part of my problem.

But the more painful issue is one of sibling dynamics. Throughout my childhood, my brother was the one who acted up and acted out. Not that he had no reason - diagnosed with ADHD and undiagnosed with Aspergers, he didn't exactly have it easy. But his problems were so visible. He got into trouble, he had manic episodes, he broke windows, he had to change schools so many times because the staff were running out of patience with his issues. Not all the time - not every day - but he was certainly a high-maintenance child.

I was the opposite. I never acted out, and when my problems did bubble to the surface, they came in the form of hysterics and inconsolable tears. I was a withdrawn, introverted child, the polar opposite of my brother. My problems were no less severe - diagnosed ADD and undiagnosed Aspergers - but I was no trouble. My brother received the lion's share of everyone's attention, because he had to. He needed it, for sure. But I needed it too . . . and never got it. That is the great unmet need of my childhood - for someone to look past the fact that my brother was loud and I was quiet, and realise that I needed help too.

Time and time again, when my brother worked himself up into a state and started acting out, my parents would rescue him - new school, new counsellor, new hobby etc. For years and years and years I waited for my parents to rescue me too. I just knew that sooner or later they would realise just how much pain I was in, how much I was struggling at school, and pull me out, find me a school that would work for me. It never happened . . . because they never knew. And I never asked for help. How could I ask, when my brother so clearly needed their attention more than I?

One effect of this dynamic is relatively easy to deal with: I need to learn to acknowledge my own needs, recognise them as valid, and be prepared to stand up for them. Another effect . . . not so easy. I have to ask myself: do I get into these relationships where I am still suffering and still living out that silently-going-crazy coping role because I am still waiting to be rescued? Is the part of me that puts up with these relationships that same little girl who waited all those years for someone to notice the pain? Am I unable to say no to crazy-making situations because it's my way of giving the universe / my peers / my parents / others one last chance to do what I needed them to do all those years ago?

I have to put that pain to bed forever before I can let someone into my life. I need to make peace with the fact that child-Christine and teen-Christine are never going to be rescued. I have to learn to live with how it was, not how it should have been.

I haven't the faintest idea where to start, but I'll get there somehow.

I'm watching "The Holiday" this evening and want to share this quote:

Iris: "I wanted to get away from one guy, an ex-boyfriend who just got engaged and forgot to tell me."
Arthur: "So, he’s a schmuck."
Iris: "As a matter of fact he is a huge schmuck . . . how did you know?"
Arthur: "He let you go. This is not a hard one to figure out."

EXACTLY.

Setting it Straight

I have mentioned before the wonderful blog Getting Past Your Past, an incredibly empowering resource for people who are grieving over their break-up and are ready to question why it went wrong and what they can do to end up in a good relationship next time. The site advocates using a tool called the "Relationship Inventory" to take stock of what went wrong and right in your last relationship, and what that meant in terms of your own satisfaction. Some of the questions are hard to answer, because they ask you to question your own beliefs and understandings. But when you finish, it feels good. Oh, so good.

These are some of the things I’ve discovered so far.

1. S was controlling, manipulative, jealous, passive-aggressive, inflexible and enormously self-centred.

2. I ignored S’s behaviour because I was busy being the ‘good’ girlfriend and enabling S’s behaviour because giving in to him meant that I was not being a brat.

3. This was an issue for me because I have struggled against a tendency to a volatile temper. I had formerly adopted crazy-making habits and was determined to defeat them, to the point where I failed to maintain basic standards about how I could be treated.

4. I also ignored S’s increasingly crazy-making behaviour because I did not have the self-confidence to admit that I could see that it was going wrong.

5. This was a self-confidence issue for me because I felt that being in a proper adult relationship was a validation of my own status as a genuine adult, meant that I was ‘keeping up’ with my partnered friends and cousins. These are two issues I have struggled with. By backing out of the relationship I would be going back to the ‘single and failing at life’ tag I’d ascribed to myself.

6. I have self-esteem issues for a number of reasons going right back to the first few years of school. One is the simple fact that having an Aspergers brain means that I have felt different, substandard and confused for much of my life. Another is my role of silent child / ‘the one who copes’ in my family structure. The latter has resulted in my aversion towards asking for help and a habit of belittling my own needs because, as a child, my needs were never as great as those of my brother. I have also developed the habit of belittling my achievements, because what I achieved in spite of my minor needs were never as impressive as what others (ie my brother) achieved in the face of his greater needs. This is a false perception, and a belief not shared by other people, who see my achievements independently to others’ and are really very proud of me.

7. In most of my relationships, I have repeated the pattern of accepting what I should not accept, because I lacked the self-confidence to draw the line at the risk of losing the relationship. In these situations I was clinging to the validation that being in any relationship provided, and doubted my own ability to distinguish between acceptable friction and unacceptable behaviour. I broke up with B because of his denigrating behaviour, then reneged and had to find it out again in the repeat relationship. I took it from E until my walk-over-ness drove him away. I caught it in time with N. With C, I allowed actual abuse to drag on for a year before finally refusing to accept it any longer, precipitating the breakup. D drove himself away by buying into his own crazy-making manipulation, but I had realised that the relationship was going to end because of it. With S, I pretended that I could accept and deal with the treatment I was receiving, and although I still have no idea exactly what precipitated the breakup on S’s part, the way he was treating me was appalling and I should not have been allowing it.

8. The key for me to have successful relationships in the future is to develop an unassailable feeling of self-worth, and to be absolutely clear with myself about what I will and will not accept from others. To do this I will need to unpack every layer of my self-doubt, address every false perception, reject every unwarranted label, and replace the falsehoods with positive truths that will support my belief that I deserve only the best treatment from only the best people. Then, and only then, will I be ready for another relationship.



So there it is. I have a LOT of work ahead of me. I don’t know how long it will take, and for some parts I don’t even know how I will achieve it. But I’m going to get there. No more crazy-making, no more doubt. I’m going to get to the bottom of this.