Re: Doubts about telling my family

[Anonymous]

No_dopamine-She didn’t ask me literally, but we were driving to my sister in law’s baby shower and she broke out with “What’s your plan, Steph?” My plan? For the weekend? For my hair? Plan for what? She saw it as an opportunity to ‘strongly encourage me to go back to school.’. The conversation was absurd on several levels. Going back to school, although it would be AWESOME, requires time and finances, neither of which I have. I work a fulltime job and in this economy I consider myself fortunate to have a job. I’m the main (read only) breadwinner in my ‘family’ as my 2 dogs, 2 cats and one box turtle have yet to get off their butts and obtain gainful employment, so everything that she said, again, for lack of a better term, was based in ignorance. I don’t think that she was acting out of malice and I know that she’s on that whole “Working below your potential” bandwagon, but has no idea that until about 3 years ago, anything above and beyond tying my own shoes was an ‘ordeal’ (probably why I prefer flip flops!)

Which brings me away from my ‘spotlight shift’ and back to the topic, about 1 1/2 before I got diganosed with ADHD, I noticed more and more people mentioning my attention span or lack thereof. My friends discussed it among themselves like it was just another personality quirk that I possessed, but I’m sure that a lot of it was based in frustration. Who wants to be talking to a friend about a problem their having only to watch them run off midsentence to chase a shiny object? Okay, I never really ‘ran off’, but mentally I might as well have been sprinting away anytime the conversation got too long.

I can remember first seeking out help YEARS ago and when I was asked by a counselor why I was there (best question ever!) answering “Because I can’t stand myself so I don’t know how the people who love me can choose to continue to be around me.” I sought out help for ME, but the people who held fast at my lowest were the ones I owe the most gratitude. My co-workers, my sister, my old roommate should be canonized at this point, her patience with me was second to NONE. My point is that the people who genuinely care about you will just be glad that you are getting help, finding your way, feeling better. The ones who must offer up their opinion on ‘imaginary diseases’ or ‘phoney doctors’ are typically people who don’t want you to get better, even if they don’t admit it. My sister told me once “When you start feeling better, you’ll be amazed at the people who support you, but even more amazed by the people who don’t want you to improve.” Putting other people down keep us from looking at our OWN problems. My being ‘Calamity Jane” was a family legend. I reveled in being the black sheep. There are still people who I will say hands down I love despite the fact that they will never want to see me as anything more than the idea they created of me when I was 17 years old. Like No_dopamine said, just hug ’em.

If you can’t actually kill ’em, kill ’em with kindness!

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