Reply To: Always secon-guessing

[quizzical]

OMG! There’s a big blank in the middle of Post #1! That’s because I got a phone call in the middle of editing it. Yes, I am ADD. I couldn’t ask for a more shining example of what I do all day long: look for the ADD moments, find them, build my case:

“Exhibit 1,236: Totally ADD Forum post under the heading of ‘Reply to: Always second-guessing.’ Observe, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the sentence that reads Those people that I confide in the most, coincidentally, and then stops at the comma…”

What I meant to say instead was: Those people that I confide in the most, coincidentally, are people who are probably undiagnosed ADD themselves.

And while I want them to consider getting evaluated, anything more than a friendly nudge seems overly confrontational: “We’re alike. I’m ADD. Do the diagram.” There’s no good way to say “You’re just like I was before I got treatment,” especially if the person thinks they’re doing just fine at life, thank you very much.

I want to lift a little piece out of seabassd’s message, because it fits where I am right now:
Another way I may judge if meds are working or not is by how much I’ve checked off my “to-do” list. So I’ve got this really big “to-do” list and I’m running around like a chicken with my head cut off and all the time I’m saying…”These Meds. aren’t working!” “Damn these Meds.” What’s really going on is that I’ve created a list that would exhaust a “normal”.

That’s so very me ever since the meds. Before the meds, I probably had just as long a to-do list, but it was so much less fully formed in my conscious mind. Pre-diagnosis, I described myself as a Type Z personality: It was impossible to light a fire under my butt because my butt wouldn’t leave the chair even long enough to strike the match. Everything was chaos, but an insurmountable sort of chaos that led to a general resignation: “I’ll never get these papers filed, so might was well waste the entire afternoon on the internet.” Or writing blog entries that are worlds longer than these two posts put together. Or drawing fan fiction comics for my own amusement.

Then the kids got bigger, and stopped taking naps. They started school. I started to realize people were counting on me to get s**t done once in a while. That’s probably what led me to seek some answers to my inability to get my act together. That, and encountering all the other parents at school, who seemed to know what their schedules were, who knew what was next on the school calendar, who could find time to volunteer, could have my kids over for play dates without apologizing for the state of their house, who actually read the newsletters and papers that came home in their kids’ folders.

How did they DO that?

Anyway, the end result was diagnosis and meds. And ever since then, I’ve been the headless chicken, frantic because I have so much to DO, so much I WANT TO DO, so much I don’t want to do but want to be DONE, SO I HAVE TO DO IT, and it all has to be now, now, now, and it’s made all the harder because not only do I have to carve out time to stay on top of things, since I never had that habit – I also feel compelled to carve out even more time to catch up on all the things in life I neglected all those years. Cleaning up today’s messes, and yesterday’s.

That doesn’t leave much room for things like this; for sitting and writing and reflecting. And I miss it terribly. I want and need to write the long rambling blog entries sometimes, and I can’t find a way to make it happen. My husband’s suggestion was to take a set amount of time – like a half-hour – once or twice a week, but I don’t write that way. For me, writing demands bigger chunks. I’m just getting started 30 minutes in. And it doesn’t feel good, or satisfying, unless I do it the old type-Z way, all hyper-focused, butt in the chair, the fire going straight from head to fingers, no lower extremities involved. Just thousands of words, words I’ll read over later and think “damn – I’m long-winded, but I’m good!” Because I do like to write, and to read what I write. If nothing else it’s a great personal record. I’ve got a whole blog with hundreds of entries that I wrote before I joined this group. I only ever had about ten followers, but I never fail to crack up when I read it, and I feel like I’ve lost something in the transition to list-tackling responsible adult parent. A med holiday is out of the question because, alas, for me, going off them makes me feel like c**p. (Which, of course, just convinces me that I’m some sort of horrible speed addict.)

So, in summary: Yeah, I second-guess my ADD diagnosis a lot, too. I get more done on the meds. My husband and kids would rate their quality of life as “higher.” And I’d probably rate my own quality of life as higher, too.

But there’s a question I can’t shake: Why can’t “higher” mean something beyond “incredibly frustrating?” What do I have to do to get it to something approaching “satisfying?”

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