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.

And What Have You Done?

I started out this year full of fire and fierce hopes, but like all years it's been a mixed bag.

Today, the novel stands at 51,867 words. That's not bad. It's more than double my previous total words written on a project. It's not finished, but it's more than half finished, so I think I'm content with my efforts given how difficult some parts of this year have been.

I've been on a mild SSRI anti-anxiety medication since shortly after my last post, and it has helped immensely with the panic and fight-or-flight responses I was having to my workload. I'm still not sure whether the not coping was due to a chemical imbalance, or whether the chemical imbalance was caused by the workload being absurd, but either way I'm coping a bit better.

The high points of this year included my brother-in-law's lovely wedding, seeing the house where my mother grew up in Nottingham, travelling around the UK a bit, celebrating our first wedding anniversary (I did a video but it's too long to post here, and I don't suppose you lot want to sit for 14 minutes looking at wedding and honeymoon pictures really!), Munchkin starting Year 1, finding the heritage-listed gravestones of my ancestors, spending an enchanted week with the SCA at Raglan Castle in Wales, and losing around a stone through Weight Watchers. 

Aha! Oho!

Australia Day is not quite the same in England.

Making friends at his uncle's wedding.

7 Magdala Road, Nottingham: my mother's childhood home.

Surprise awesome park stop in Yorkshire.

 

Robin Hood's Bay.

Bridge Farm in Almeley, Herefordshire. My great-great-grandfather, Arthur William Dew, was living here in 1871 aged 2.

In the ongoing storage fight in Munchkin's tiny bedroom, I sewed a bookshelf.

Theme park day.

Raglan Castle, Wales

Caution: Archery

Sightseeing in Chichester.

Boarding the plane in Dubai en route to Perth.

A park in Glen Forrest, Perth. My father and I sat on the play equipment, drank coffee and talked.

The graves of my direct ancestors and their relatives, Ashurst, Kent.

Apropos.

6:15am, 25/12/2013

It's been mild so far, but the frost will come.

The low point of the year was, of course, losing my grandmother Jean. Here's some photos of her, just because.

Aged 4, growing up in Liverpool.

Aged 19.

With my grandfather Paul, and their children: (back) Mark, Penny, Nicola; (front) Jonquil, David, Erica, Leonora.

Mum, me, Jean, about 2001.

My first university graduation, 2003.

Family Gathering in 2009.

 It's been a year of big events, lots of weddings and lots of driving - from Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north east to Southampton on the south coast, west to Shropshire and Herefordshire and out to Raglan, and down in the south east to Kent... I've covered a lot of ground this year, and enjoyed it. There's been new babies (though alas still not one of my own yet) and a few people have left us. Certainly a memorable year.

I haven't got a lot of big goals for 2014. Keep writing the book until it is done, then edit it and start on something new. Keep losing weight, until I hit my goal. Try to get a masters application accepted and funded to start next October, on a Heritage theme. Cope at school. Write another Christmas play. Take more photographs. Go for more walks. See more of this amazing country. Make more garb. Sleep properly. Wear interesting clothes. Have some fun. Blog regularly?

Happy new year, everyone!

Retcon

Retcon
1. (original meaning) Adding information to the back story of a fictional character or world, without invalidating that which had gone before.
- Urban Dictonary

A few months ago we took out a subscription to Lovefilm Instant, which among other things has given me dangerously unfettered access to Buffy episodes. I have been indulging in a fit of nostalgia and watching the entire thing, all 7 series, from start to finish.

Watching the early seasons of Buffy is like looking back at my own teenage years. The main characters are supposed to be mere months younger that me; the clothing, hair, technology and mannerisms are all those of my own generation.

As I was watching the first season, I couldn't help paying extra attention to the character of Willow, who as anyone familiar with the series will know, later becomes/realises she is a lesbian. For those who are not familiar, teen-Willow has a crush on a boy, slightly-older-teen-Willow has a relationship with a boy, but early-20s Willow has two successive relationships with women. I don't know - I haven't read up on it - whether this was always something that Joss Whedon intended, or whether it developed as the seasons went on.

When I look back at my own high school years, there are some things that stick out glaringly as signs that I was gay and didn't know it. The way I blushed and stuttered when speaking to girls. The way I couldn't quite 'get' crushing on the usual cute boy celebrities and had to pretend as best I could. The way I craved "intense friendships" with girls and didn't quite know what that meant.

As I watch these early seasons, I can't help looking for the same signs in Willow... and imagining them, where I can. Imagining in her unknowing proto-lesbian character my own proto-lesbian self.

It's surprisingly therapeutic to overlay the past with the future, to see in earlier events the shadow of later events that the players in those events could not even imagine.
 

A funny old memory...

I was searching through old files on my computer today and came across one of the oldest I've got - from all the way back in early 1995. It contained two poems written by my then-10 year old neighbour, Sarah C, one of which was about me.

It made me laugh heartily and reflect that in some ways I've not changed all that much since I was 14...

MY FRIEND IS CALLED A DIMWIT.

By Sarah C.

My friend is called a dimwit,

She lives across the road.

Most people call her Christine,

But I don’t think so.

She talks like she’s a dictionary,

She talks like she’s a twerp.

She talks like she’s a maniac,

But she’s my friend,

And that’s that.

Lesbian

A few people have privately pinged me about the fact that my info, both here and elsewhere, now says 'lesbian' instead of 'bisexual'.

A lot of pondering went into that change. I identified as bisexual for eleven years (secretly for the first ten years) so it is a label that I had come to find comfortable. However, the more I thought about it the more inaccurate and inadequate it became. Similarly, although I used to feel ambivalent about the exotic, othering 'lesbian' label, it had become familiar and I was ready to accept it. Identifying as bisexual felt wrong, while the lesbian label felt right.

The kinds of questions I'm being asked about this are: Have you changed from a bisexual to a lesbian? Or were you a lesbian all along? If so, what about that 10-year string of heterosexual relationships?

They're good questions, and I have been trying to answer them myself. It's difficult to consider one's own past objectively, but I have tried to be at least critical of my experience so that I can answer accurately.

It's true that until this year I believed I was attracted to men as well as women. I was convinced of this despite all available evidence, that being that my relationships with men routinely sucked and were devoid of physical and emotional satisfaction. (Yes, I do mean all of them. Sorry, any exes reading this, but them's the breaks. And really, if you're smart enough to read this blog you must have realised just how badly matched we were). I persisted with the pursuit of a safe, respectable heterosexual relationship despite proving to myself time and time again that they just didn't work for me. There were other issues at play in some of my poor partner choices - emotional baggage not related to my sexuality - but normalcy was part of it. I didn't want to rock the boat, so I kept on trying, one disaster after another.

I don't think I was ever truly bisexual. The frequency and potency of my attraction to women has been largely unchanged since my childhood (even when I thought I was just desiring a close friendship) and it has blossomed since I accepted that this is the only way for me. Without the red herring of "needing" a normal heterosexual relationship I can't imagine why I ever wanted one in the first place!

I'm wearing the 'lesbian' label with pride and joy today, where once it used to both frighten and tantalise. And I am very, very happy to own that element of myself. It feels like coming home.

Four Years

I was answering a message board post just now, and looked up the date of my first blog post. Weirdly enough, it was today, four years ago. Bizarre!

I absolutely boggle when I think of how much  has happened in the last four years. In September 2006 I was working as a project assistant in the gap year between quitting archaeology and starting my teaching degree. I was sharing a house with a best friend who is no longer my friend at all. I was still living through the three year recovery from my first genuinely abusive relationship, and had no idea that a line-up of three quite awful relationships were on the menu for the following three years.

Three years ago I'd finished my final teaching prac and was struggling with the resultant feeling that I couldn't teach at all. I was living with my parents and wondering what the future held and where I would go next. I was also experiencing high school reunions for the first time.

Two years ago I was just days away from ending a disaster relationship, and had no idea that the grief that was still to come would plunge me into the incredible journey of self-discovery that has lead me to where I am now. The me of September 2008 had so much still to come.

This time last year I was again on the road to recovery after another horror relationship and my first (and hopefully last) experience of physical assault. I was still stumbling around in a daze in many ways, but had also made significant progress, and had taken the wild and life-changing step of joining the SCA, a decision that has shaped my life ever since.

Four dramatic, turbulent, soul-searing, growing, knowing years.

I wonder what the next four will hold?

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.

Still here ... honestly ...

I can't really apologise for failing to blog lately. I haven't even been trying. Putting words to my life right now just gives me flaily panicky feelings most of the time.

So here's some things that have been happening . . .

I leave for the UK in 3 weeks tomorrow. All the paperwork is done and I'm almost half packed (or something like that ...). Right now there is a lot of chaos around and bits and pieces of things I need to get done, which isn't really very much fun. I'm not having second thoughts exactly, but I'm finding myself frequently almost paralysed with fear that this will go horribly wrong.  My chief fear is running out of money. Logically I know that I will have work, and it is going to be steady work, and if the teaching work is not quite enough I can waitress or something too, but I'm terrified of being alone in a strange city with no money. Silly terror since I will plan to avoid exactly that and will know well in advance if that is a likely outcome, but still. I am so scared it hurts.

I just need to breathe. I know it'll be ok. I'll make it ok.

*

I got 82% on my first assignment for the year. It was a theology assignment so that's quite impressive - my first essay in a new discipline! When the tutor starts the comments with the words "your essay's only weakness...", you know you've done okay. I'm still enjoying both the theology and the literature units, and still thinking about doing higher level study in both of them. I just can't make up my mind which order to do them in! Master of Ministry first, or literature PhD? Hmm. Oh well, I won't finish the BA until mid-2013 so I have a while to decide.

*

I'm struggling a little at the moment with the feeling that I've managed to get my 20s and 30s arse-backwards. I spent the whole of my 20s chasing the dream of settling down and having a family, and failing at it miserably. Now I'm about to enter my 30s and getting to the age where time for that is ticking away rapidly, and yet I've suddenly discovered the joy of being free and untethered, and I want to get out there and have random relationships and new experiences and not aim to be tied down at all for a good while yet. And through that I risk running out of time to have a family.

There's nothing I can do about it except trust that it will work out okay (and remember that the women in my family have had healthy pregnancies well into their 40s so I shouldn't fear running out of time all that much), but I can't help the feeling of wanting to stamp my feet and shriek that it's not fair. It's like I'm trying to cram everything that my 20s should have been into the last few precious months before I hit my 30s, and I'm getting so confused about what I want and where I want it. I think, overall, that the London move will make this easier not harder - new people and places and contexts in which I can safely explore my real, full identity without the weight of peoples' presuppositions and past knowledge. I am determined not to hide anything about myself amongst my new friends in London. I've spent so much time concealing so much of me in Perth that I'm now hemmed in to the outer identity I've woven. There's a few people who get the full version of Christine (hi, Hilary) but not many. I want everyone to know the whole Christine from now on, and it's easier to begin that with a clean slate in a new city. I hope.

*

I'm currently enjoying a ... thing ... with a guy, which is very sane and comfortable and enjoyable and undemanding and affectionate and lovely. We both know it's going nowhere because I'm leaving the country, but it's enough for right now. How ironic that the "thing" that is ostensibly not a relationship is the healthiest relationship I've ever had. What was that phrase again? Oh yeah, "arse-backwards". That's the one. *headdesk*

*

My grandfather is in hospital with "multiple infections", after having been hospitalised for pneumonia and sent home again. He is quite ill and very uncomfortable. A small part of my brain is in full-scale freak-out over this, but the rest of my brain can't deal and has just shut the door and said kindly but firmly that we'll deal with that if and when we have to, and not before. I'm feeling a lot of guilt about this - afraid that it's an unnatural Aspie reaction that people would find cold and heartless - but it's the only way I can cope at the moment. I have so many things on my "oh hey there potential meltdown" list that the only way I'm surviving is by refusing to acknowledge them. I'm pretty sure there'll be an episode of rather cathartic stormy weeping when I hit a calm spot, but I'll deal with that later too.

*

I am trying to sell my car. I've never sold a car before. I don't really want to sell this one. Bah.

*

I have reached the point where I need to rehome my beautiful wonderful cat, Jemima. This is another thing I know I'll cry about when I finally let go, but I can't let go just yet. If you're in the Perth area and want a cat, consider giving Jemima a home. She is a darling. This is where she is right now . . . I was lying on the bed under a brown blanket doing uni readings, and she lay down next to me pressed right up against my body. When I got up and went back to the computer, she made a nest out of the blanket and curled up in it. D'awwww.

*

This song by Kelly Clarkson is where I am at right now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLUmlyuXonk

*

I think I've pretty much covered everything. Welcome to my life right now. It is complicated!

Now that I've got all of this out of my system I'm hopeful that I'll be back to regular blogging. I've been frozen in silence for a while, but I've broken through, so now there may be a flood ...