adhdandshit

[adhdandshit]

My head

I’m a bit scared of what’s wrong with my head. And I’m not talking about ADHD.

Like I’ve told before, I’ve been having my episode for the past twelve years or so. It might have started later but I’m not sure when. That means, me hitting my head with my fists and sometimes even banging it against a wall. And for many years I’ve been terrified to find out what it might have done to my head.

I know it isn’t the root cause of my concentration problems because they’ve been with me all my life and my dyslexia diagnosis came just around the time the episodes were starting or might have been even just before them. But I’m still scared that the reason why university has gone so terribly while before it I was always capable of somehow keeping my shit together is because of some damage I have caused myself.

If I ever get (I should write when I get but this isn‘t one of those days when I can be that optimistic about any help from outside my family) the referral to the neuropsychiatric polyclinic, I will have to tell them all this and then most likely they’ll do the scans and check if there’s notable damage. And as much I would like to know, I’m also scared out of my mind to find out. I know thanks to my psychology hobby what brain trauma like that can do to your head. And whether the brain will recover from it with time or not, no one knows.

Although the earlier might have sounded like it, I have tried getting help to the episodes and I have told doctors what I have done to myself during them. Only one of the many has asked whether I think they should do a scan and I told her ‘yes’. But she quickly forgot the whole thing and it was never returned to again. In my opinion, the doctors just don’t seem to care what I might do to myself during these episodes. They don’t ask much about them and have never given me any advices or medication for them. The advices most likely wouldn’t do much anyway but they’re lack shows how little they care. Maybe they don’t really listen to me or understand fully what I’ve tried telling them. Maybe they have no idea that I am a danger to myself during them. But whatever the reason, I’ve been left alone with with the whole thing to ruin my life. Not really hard to see, why I don’t have a lot of hope for the appointment in August.

Next time I’ll try to write about my cognition issues if I remember this thought then.

[adhdandshit]

Future of blog, parades and sensory overload

Can’t seem to find a way to focus on my own works and how to keep this blog going. This is what always happens to me. Once I lose my momentum, it’s completely gone and it’s very hard for me to recapture.

It’s not that there wouldn’t be things going inside my head. It’s just that now that I have once again lost the my writing routine and rhythm, these things going around in my head seem to slide out of it before I have the time and energy to write about them. Need to get big notepaper-thingy here at my work space, don’t have even notes here, and with my kind of a head, it sucks.

Okay, I’m going to write about yesterday. Last weekend I began a text about stuff I was thinking about then on Saturday night at the train, but I lost the text and I decided not to retrace it. If I want to write about in the future, I will.

But, so, about yesterday: I was at the First of May parade. It was okay, except that I had been nervous and having my episodes for the past few days because of the doubling of my asthma medication and had one in the morning on our way to the starting point. This made it much rougher for me, considering that these kind of things are usually already too hectic for me.

This time, I started going into a dissociative episode during the parade and we left pretty quickly after it. Most people didn’t notice a thing but one of my friends asked if everything was okay and told me text her if there was something.

I think it’s time to consider that maybe parades and demonstrations aren’t my thing. The cold or the hot and the walking etc. I can deal with. Even the social part goes pretty okay. But the total sensory overload of hundreds or thousands of people, the talking, the movement, the cars around us and all the other parts of it, that is too much for me. Afterwards, I always become unresponsive and dissociative. My brain becomes so overwhelmed that it tires itself out and can’t process anymore information.

Even today, over 24 hours later, I am still a little bit lost from yesterday’s experience. Gotta find better ways to participate. It’s gotta be okay that I’m not and cannot be the person I once wanted to be. Just gotta keep on doing the things that make me feel good, make me better.

[adhdandshit]

One of those days

This is one of those days when I can’t seem to able to focus on anything and little less do anything productive. I feel anxious to my core because not only can’t I do anything productive, I can’t even enjoy myself. I just can’t get my shit together today.

What makes this day worse than most Sundays like this (these days are not always Sundays but it Sunday more often than any other day) is that I have a work assignment I have to finish for tomorrow but I can’t put my head into it. I just can’t focus on it and I’m not sure whether there’s anything I can do about it.

I hate letting people down, so I hate dreading that I want finish it today. I should be able to feel like this about my own things and projects, mental health care workers have told me so on and on and on, but it’s just not possible for me try to stop being extra-productive whenever I feel like it and I’m just no good at clenching my teeth and crying through projects I want to do, not like I can do with work stuff and such. It’s no fun but when it isn’t easy and it isn’t fun, it’s still mandatory in a way taking care of myself isn’t.

And here we come to the point that none of health experts so far haven’t understood. I am full of ideas and full of excitement for them and wish to work hard but I cannot put those to any good use unless I feel like my life will collapse if I don’t do it. My dreams cannot make me do things no matter how hard I want them but a boss can. I still might not do the thing in an orderly fashion and well etc. but I can make myself do it because I see the bottom-line clearly: either I do it and feel relieved or I don’t and fail, which might make my future very, very bleak.

On Friday I went to a peer support group for ADHD and one of the people there suggested that I might do better if I didn’t fixate too much on the goal but would learn to appreciate the process. I’m still not sure if I can do this but I’ll try harder with it from now on. Maybe I do find a way to manage it.

[adhdandshit]

Lethal breaks and anxiety

It’s been the biggest pause since I began this blog and I feel anxious already. It’s just the same I’ve already told you, when I have a pause, they tend to turn into an abandonment of the project. And I really don’t want to quit and abandon this project. I also don’t want to quit writing daily but write way, way more instead. And again, I haven’t written daily for a while and I’m losing my cool about it.

Saw my doctor day before yesterday and it seems pretty good for the asthma diagnosis. I can’t even begin to describe how happy I am about that but I truly am. Getting a diagnosis means even more to me than the help and health I have gotten from using the medications the past six months. Of course these things do absolutely nothing to my problems with concentration and from time to time doubling regular medication during flu has made my anxiety a lot worse but they have cut almost 2/3 of the breaks I had earlier because of the untreated asthma. And that was for 12 fucking years.

Why cursing again now that I got my help? Well, because for so many years every single time I told about this a doctor of mine, they would do no more than order a set of blood tests and when nothing showed up there, they told me it was the depression making me sick. When the blood tests showed anemia, well naturally it was just that and it didn’t matter much that the problem stayed after all the symptoms went away and I got my hemoglobin in order. And what makes me all the more furious is that yet again I have to deal with this shit when it comes to getting to the ADHD tests.

It seems that when it comes to mental issues, the doctors look at the patient quickly and find a diagnosis that the fits the symptoms they see then and there. Then that diagnosis keeps on being treated no matter what the results. If the treatment doesn’t work, either they try another one and then another one and so on never considering that the diagnosis might have been the wrong one, or worse, they decide that it is something in the patient resisting the treatment and so if they won’t eat the meds that do absolutely nothing for them but give them a bunch of horrible side effects, they’re beyond help, because they won’t do what they’re told. And yet again, it’s never considered they might be treating a completely wrong thing.

Of course there are good and flexible doctors as well but at times of need they seem as rare as winning lottery tickets. You know they’re there, but they always seem to go to other people.

___

Now five days later, I’m just going to post this. Cannot finish this any better right now.

[adhdandshit]

Childhood revisited, part II

So, haven’t found the time and focus to write for a few days but this morning, I have to. This is because I saw my sister yesterday.

I was a bit nervous beforehand because of how little my mother had remembered and so I was afraid it might be the same with her or that she might doubt the ADHD symptoms in me. But instead, seeing her was a relief in so many ways.

My sister remembered my childhood quite clearly and she didn’t have any doubts whether the diagnosis fit. “Considering all that fussing and messing around when you were a kid, I would be surprised if it wasn’t ADHD”, she said. When I was trying to go to the fact that with kids that can be considered normal but that I hadn’t really grown out of it, she insisted before I could finish my thought: “No, it wasn’t the normal a kid messing around thing, it was something more, something different.” She also remembered quite clearly how accident prone I was even considered to other four of our siblings (including herself). And her boyfriend has ADHD as well, so she kind of knows what she is talking about. She also compared his and my constant tardiness.

Of course, this still isn’t the same as proof recorded on my school and daycare documents telling of signs, without those I’ll still be nervous whether the diagnosis will be taken seriously, but it is a clear proof to myself that I’m doing the right thing pursuing this. I’m again hopeful though that at least a trained eye will be able to see the signs in those documents’ remarks because how could it be that I remember all the problem behavior and trouble as well as do my sister and a little bit my mother but that no one at school or in daycare would have noted any of it? It seems impossible but the way the system has let me down again and again, I can’t say I’d be surprised.

[adhdandshit]

Childhood revisited

I didn’t have the energy to write a post on Sunday and only now on Tuesday have the energy to finish this, I think seeing my mother completely voluntarily first time probably ever (it doesn’t really count completely voluntary if the person is at the emergency ward in the hospital and might die, does it?) took and have been taking over my thoughts. When something is making me nervous or excited or pretty much feeling any emotion at all, it takes over my thoughts so that I barely function when it comes to anything apart from it.

The visit went okay, but a few things did bother me. She could only tell a few adjectives from my childhood, that was all. Nothing else. When I asked her if I could follow instructions as a child, she couldn’t tell. Just said: Probably not very well. I know it’s been a long time and I have four siblings but still it hurts.

The good and bad thing was that she could tell about my father a lot more. He always had a lot of projects but never did the follow-ups. Sounds familiar. He was good doing any of the housework. Getting warmer. Looking at him working at his thesis, she had a hard time believing when in fact did finish it. Ding-ding-ding, the bells are ringing. So even though it sucks that she remembers all those things about him but practically nothing about me, it does seem fairly easy to see he probably had ADHD just like me, which should help getting the diagnosis. What was perplexing though, it’s not just my father’s side of the family.

My mother told me that her brother also had a lots of trouble at school all his life, barely finished high school and when he later did get into uni through open university, he got good grades from his exams but never finished his master’s thesis. Though not exactly the story of my life, unlike my father’s, it’s not hard to come to the conclusion that he might have had ADHD too.

Of course these suspicions can never be confirmed now, but they do paint a picture of both sides of my family. At least the characteristics of ADHD definitely are nothing unfamiliar to us. But I’m still not much closer to having the proof I need for an ADHD diagnosis. All I can hope is that someday, someway I get the referral and then at the polyclinic they’ll see reason.

But I am more sure than ever that my self-diagnosis is correct because why else would listening to others for anything boring and longer than thirty seconds be so extremely painful (I feel like I want to scratch my eyes out), listening intently sitting still so frigging hard and focusing on the subjects so impossible? The only good thing is that exercise and coffee helps some and so I remember to ask my partner to restart their story after I realize at dinner table that my mind was somewhere completely else.

P.S. Better than anything though, I’m not depressed at all and at the moment, not anxious either.

[adhdandshit]

Why, how?

I have written already how my relationships haven’t really gone most of the time like I wish they had, but now I’m going dwell a little bit more into that one. Because up until a few weeks ago, I had no idea there was anything else wrong with my social skills apart from my temper (which is nothing special in our family) and the fact that I could be annoying, unreliable and uncommunicative when depressed (which again isn’t very special for depressed people). But the people around me did give me clues.

Like I’ve already told, I’ve been bullied and left out all through school. But only know have I remembered an important feeling I often had already before school even started, in kindergarten. Probably all parents know and most remember from their childhood how difficult three kids playing together can be. Someone always gets left out.

But for me, it was worse than that because a) I’ve always felt insecure in the company of more than one person – I don’t know who to look at, whom to talk to, how to act and how to be “in on the jokes”. And b) because of all the things in described in reason a, I’ve always felt the one who’s going to be left out is definitely going to be me wrench in my stomach the moment another kid would come up to me and my friend, and ask if they could play with us. I felt nauseous every single time, but probably always left it to my friend to say “Sure!” and wouldn’t resist the invitation. I wasn’t mean or unwelcoming to other people, just an insecure and sad little kid.

I still get that feeling of anxiousness. Every time my discussion with someone is going good and another person wants to join us. This happens a lot in parties especially and I have a hard time having fun unless I’m drinking. Not that I’m a big drinking, usually after two or three at most I want to go home to sleep, but still in parties I feel like I need the alcohol as my buffer. (Also I might like to go home at that time for the fact that parties drain the life out of me.) In situations were people don’t drink and alcohol isn’t an acceptable buffer, I use coffee. Although in the end I might be even more anxious after all that coffee, while I’m drinking it and at first it always helps great. That burst of energy helps me focus on the situation and at the same time not think too much about it. Still, socially alcohol does it better. When I drink is the only time I can listen to other people for long periods of time without interrupting.

The thing that confuses me, is that I don’t know what it is exactly that I do wrong in the social situations. Sometimes I let frogs escape my mouth but doesn’t that happen to pretty much everybody who’s just a little bit more talkative. It’s not like I don’t know when the social temperature in the room drops. In fact, I’m pretty much an expert on that and on how other people are feeling. Is that because of the way I was built or because of what it was like  living in the house with my father (I learned to listen to every single tiny little sound to know who’s at home, what are they doing and do they seem upset), I don’t know. Probably both because my brother who’s only a year and a half younger than me, was better at just going all the way to his mind to escape it all. But I felt defenseless if I didn’t know what was said when screamed (was it about me or one of the other kids?) And I couldn’t and never have able to block any sound from my mind no matter where my head is capable of taking me.

It’s been some days since I began drafting this post and today suddenly at work it dawned on me a bit, what is the problem with so many parts of social situations and me. I can’t follow conversations well, but that’s not the biggest issue. The real problem is that I can’t hold the topics spoken, think of them and then structure a good answer to the conversation. Mostly I just end up nodding and feeling like an airhead. It’s not that I can’t think of those things, but when discussing something not familiar to me, something I haven’t given much thought, my brain takes too long to process it for me to participate. Because of this, I’m rarely very active at meetings or gatherings unless I have prepared myself extremely well. And after long conversations I feel more exhausted than others. Today I had four hours of conversation and I can’t see straight and everything feels foggy.

Now I know why seeing my friends feels so exhausting even though I love to know what they’re up to in life. Now I know why offices drain my energy. Now I know why I can’t say anything meaningful at all when my partner talks about something complicated but if I read the same, I’m completely ready for a discussion. And these things suck but at least it isn’t just me but ADHD.

[adhdandshit]

Numb

Today I feel numb. Haven’t done much except read a third of a book (I’m almost always a slow reader because of dyslexia and concentration problems) and drawn some.

I tried going to an assembly with around fifty people and did for a short while but I felt there was this strange wall between me and everyone else, and so I left. I know that feeling well, I used to get it often when I still had dissociative spells, but this time it wasn’t really that feeling that drove me out of there by lunch time. It was more the fact that I didn’t have any energy to speak about any of the issues and that more than anything, I didn’t care about anything.

I don’t care about anything because I feel like my dream of getting this thing in me under control has been shattered. I just want to disappear from the world and stop caring about anything. I can’t keep trying to but everything together and have a good life when all I do is keep falling on my face.

I used to think that I wouldn’t last in the working world because no one would hire me or if they did, they would eventually see what I really was like and I would make mistakes too big to overcome and they’d fire me. But no, that’s not it. It’s me, I can’t stay put.

It’s the same every time no matter what the job. I get hired and I’m at the same time exhilarated and terrified of what I will mess up this time. But I overcome the fear going over the things for the job again and again in my head. By the time I start at work, I’m half-convinced I’ll do great. And at the first I do. I’m faster and more dedicated than anyone and put all my efforts into the job. But as the weeks go by and I become more familiar with the tasks, my interest and especially concentration on the job begins to falter. After two months all I want to do is quit and do my own things at home or somewhere where I can be alone doing what I want. And I have to use all my energy to go to work everyday and not quit. Until the day when it either ends because it’s a  temporary position to begin with (lately) or I finally give in and quit (earlier).

This same pattern that I follow every single time makes me feel like a flake, a person who doesn’t understand about hard work and making a living. But I do. My host-mom (from my exchange year) told me she had never seen anyone so serious at my age. Most of my bosses from before will probably tell that I seemed like a hardworking, dedicated and serious employee (at least in the beginning). It’s just that I can’t keep it up for anything at all.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s my own project or some else, if it’s creative, following simple instructions or a mix. It doesn’t help to be my own boss or someone’s employee, it always comes. That feeling: I can’t do this anymore. And I can’t describe it because it isn’t just boredom. It feels like I would rather go home and slap my head than to keep doing what I’m doing, and it bares no signification whether I believe in the work or not. I just want to stop and never come back.

I think that if I wasn’t such a serious person, this tendency would have done ten times more harm in my life than it has. Not sure how glad I really am, but now it’s just done small dents in my life and slightly bigger ones on my self-esteem. I remember walking out of my geography exam to go to a movie with my sister after getting frustrated because I couldn’t use coordinated. I got a 4+ which is a failing grade in Finland (but with a plus!). I probably could have gotten a 6 or a 7 if I had tried but I just couldn’t sit still any longer making sense of it and feeling stupid.

That’s one thing I’ve never been good at, tolerating feeling stupid. And I think all the professionals I’ve seen have always thought that the fact that I give up everything I don’t master fast enough is because of this. Maybe there is some truth to it when it comes to playing an instrument with someone else in the same apartment or room and at such situations but being nearly convinced that that was my true downfall for a long, long time, I don’t think that the case anymore. In many situations I am not that person anymore and haven’t been for years. I know how to laugh at myself and am quite okay at doing things I will never master on any level considered great or even good. I’m good with trying to achieve okay in playing video games and musical instruments. So was does my pattern still persist?

[adhdandshit]

That hollow feeling of going nowhere

Everything is feeling very bleak right now and that’s why I couldn’t muster up the energy to finish a post yesterday. I went to the psychiatrist at our occupational health care, and was so sure that all the papers from my schools etc. would have arrived and I would finally get the referral to the neuropsychiatric polyclinic. But no, of course I was once again naive thinking things would be easy for once and I would get real help. Firstly, only my earlier psychiatric health care records had arrived, nothing else, but secondly and even worse, once he saw my grades, he decided it couldn’t be ADHD because I had good grades. I didn’t even had excellent grades but according to him they were top-notch, so surely I cannot have ADHD. Because of course people with ADHD are idiots or at least they all are trouble makers amounting to nothing. So, I just found out that he’s one of those people which means that he probably won’t be writing me the referral next time at all.

I know he doesn’t know his shit and I just ignore him and start going through other places, but it’s really hard for me to get over disappointments like this and I can’t help but wonder whether I’ll just be the unluckiest person ever and what if all the professionals I meet are like him? What if the facts that I’ve gotten alright grades until university and have had depression and anxiety since fourteen, and also have gotten (whether wrongly diagnosed or not, I couldn’t tell) the emotionally unstable personality diagnosis will always end up biting me in the ass so that I never get to polyclinic where there are the people who know about these things?

To be honest, all I feel like is drinking because drinking is the only thing that helps me escape my anxiety for a while when drinking and helps me concentrate the next day unlike anything healthy that I can do. I know alcoholism isn’t pretty, watched it very close by happening to my mother and grandfather, but I’m not sure if I have any other options anymore. If nobody with prescribe me meds that help or give me the kind of health care that I need, then what choice do I have but self-medicate? It’s a terrible idea, but at the moment everything else feels useless.

Still, I probably won’t sink so low. I love exercising and when you drink, trying to exercise the day after it is a pain in the ass. And I’m not good at self-destruction, I know, I’ve tried. But I’m not sure what I’ll do to myself if things don’t take a turn for the better at student health care.

Also, now I feel like I should have been better at self-destruction at an earlier age. Maybe then I would be taken more seriously now. At least the doctor I saw yesterday couldn’t have cared less that I couldn’t stay at any work for more six months (except one, but that felt like an eternity) and apart from two, anywhere more than a few months. It didn’t matter because I hadn’t gotten fired. The fact that I do wrong things, don’t go to work on time, have to try constantly to fulfill my hours with all my efforts and try to cover up some of my mistakes because I feel so ashamed about them, didn’t matter, because that’s according to him all in my head, but the fact that I have got fired would be proof. The fact that to many places I haven’t been asked again the next time or that I was basically smoked out of my longest employment, probably don’t matter either.

So, once again in my life I’m in the same shitty position. I’m too not-okay to be able to function normally and for my life to anywhere but I’m not bad enough to get real help, yet I have too long a medical history and too many problems to be considered “a normal, reliable person” who is worthy of being trusted about what they say and helped according to it. So what the fuck am I supposed to do with my life?

[adhdandshit]

Arts and my wandering mind

After a long, long while I finally drew and wrote fiction today. And more then anything, did both while absolutely concentrated. I cannot describe how good this feels. Hope this could last forever, even though I know it won’t. That’s hyperfocus for you: gets your hopes all up and then leaves you high and dry with only a memory of what it feels like. And after a while, you’re not even sure whether you’re remembering correctly or is your head just playing tricks on you, your memory painting golden edges on those pictures you miss.

Yesterday, I had a long work day and did a lot of other things as well but couldn’t make myself write. Today, I’ve been sick and at home but haven’t written until now that it’s twenty minutes to nine in the evening. Sure, I’ve done more today than on most sick days: cooked lunch for myself, made two cups of coffee (with aeropress and separately, so there were a lot of stages), read and drawn. And yesterday I draw too.

But stopping for a single day is usually fatal to my habits. That’s how all my habits die no matter how much I put my mind into trying to pick it up the day after it. It’s always the same: I feel like lead and the trying is awful and sticky. This is why I’m terrible at sticking to good habits whereas bad habits always seem to come back no matter what I do.

I’m nervous about this weekend and the time after it. I have just managed to start and keep for a short while a few very important habits, important to me, and writing this blog is maybe the biggest of them. But I can’t use it for writing my bachelor thesis at the moment nor can I get Scrivener for my book projects on this, so I need to install another operating system than Linux. Well, my partner is going to because I don’t have energy or the follow-through at the moment to complete a project like that. Anyway, it’ll take the weekend and the wifi-card might not work at first, so I wouldn’t have internet in any place else except at home until that would be sorted out.

Even the weekend with two days horrifies me because I can see how it’s going to kill this blog and habit yet again. The thought of it is turning me into an anxious little bundle of hopelessness. It doesn’t feel fair when I have finally managed to stick to a habit of writing this long and through this have been able to cut back on TV and do more other things, better things.

Reading ADHD-stories from a book I borrowed from the library, I’ve connected with the same reappearing parts in those lives before their diagnosis. Piles of interest in everything in the world, tons of unfinished projects and lots and lots of better than the medium knowledge about many, many things, but expertise in nothing. I just hope the right health care, therapy and medication will make a difference because I don’t think I could stand if that would be my legacy in the end. I would just love to be able to focus and be really good at something, not slightly above average in everything. I would really love to continue this blog as well, because this has helped me a long way already.

[adhdandshit]

Waiting for the bottom, always

For probably twenty years now, I’ve learned to wait for the worst when it comes to myself. When I was younger, for until about ten years ago, I was mostly positive about my odds to beat and do anything and thought that things that didn’t go so well, were either do the circumstances being against me or just bad luck. Yes, there where tough days too because I’ve always been good that being hard on myself, but self-confidence in most areas of my life always won. The one where it didn’t was social life because since I was in kindergarten I’ve known there was something socially wrong with me and never quite known how to be around other people, and my trauma at 6/7 only made it ten times worse. But in other areas of my life I was convinced, it would all turn around when I grew up and left home and then I’d be going places. 

At sixteen I wasn’t quite so sure anymore and my depression had only gone worse through the years but there were still so many positive days and on those especially I was convinced that when I would move on my own, it would all turn better. Maybe not that second but in a few years at least. That promise of changing circumstances kept my hopes up and I saw a good future if I only made it there.

Then I moved on my own at nearly nineteen after an exchange year. I was glad to be on my own but also a total mess. A thing that I knew affecting me was partly about me but also about that period in my life. Heartache, it had followed me for a few years back then and it would come back again. And almost always in the same form because I’m not sure whether heartache is truly the best description since the one who broke my heart was me. It always went the same way. I fell head over heels for someone, got bored or felt they weren’t quite what I wanted or needed after all, broke it off, regretted quite soon and very begged them back on my hands and knees. Good for them, mostly they weren’t so smitten with this and so had happened with yet another ex-girlfriend before this summer. And like I always did, I got depressed and half-suicidal.  

Why I got suicidal was probably about both feeling like a total fuckup and at the same time feeling like the loneliest person on Earth. Relationship were the one place where I felt I knew almost how to act and they build most of my social life. Friendship I didn’t know quite what to do with and just ended up trying to warm up always after breakups, which again people didn’t really fancy as a pattern. Everybody wants to feel special in another person’s life, in a small tiny way at least, but I had no idea how to listen to other people or connect with them unless I literally wanted them, and so there was a huge disparity between what I could give (basically nothing) and what others wanted (something, anything).

The other reason I became a mess I have only know come to recognize: all the little responsibilities in life. Paying bills on time (I’m close to mastering it finally, or at least to a certain degree, now, almost nine years later), buying and cooking food, buying and cooking food I could afford with a part-time job and a student budget, making my own coffee, cleaning, washing laundry, remembering all my appointments, limiting all the none-food items I couldn’t afford etc., the list goes on and on. I’d had a hard time with all of these things even when I was living at home, where I didn’t have to worry about budgets and many other things on the list. But since I had taken care of many of the things on the list since I was a kid and when I was in Belgium, it didn’t really occur to me that these might raise an issue. When you’re a kid, you think you’ll just know how to do all this the moment you move in your place or at least learn it all painlessly winging it. And I was much less of a kid than most at that age.

The problem wasn’t really know-how – I knew how. I just couldn’t follow through the plans I made in my head. The only thing I was good at was letting everything turn to a pile of shit and then at the last possible moment crawling through it all and thinking, next time I’m going to do this right, right from the beginning. Except, that kind of a next time never came, and I always did it the same. (Writing this I’m wondering if I just do it like that from now on, and not even try to do it any other way when it comes to organizational things. Cleanliness and bills, I’m still going to try to do the right way, because when you don’t, they start living a life of their own.)

And many times when I realized I was again in the middle of a pile of shit, I would get depressed. During the year I was nineteen and finally living on my own, I realized the bottom was always coming. I was still hopeful that someday it wouldn’t but I was already starting to anxiously wait for it. And the feeling of anxious anticipation would always come earlier and earlier down the line, until I was waiting for my every single day to turn to shit. And that is a good way to psych yourself to do absolutely nothing at all. If all I do is going to fail no matter how hard I try or how hopeful I am, then why bother? First I lost the hopefulness because it was easier to fail if I was waiting myself to do just that. I didn’t disappoint myself anymore. But soon after that I lost most of my will the try as well. Knowing I would most likely fail made doing anything seem pretty pointless. 

Still I did most I was expected to do, because that’s what I had always done. The biggest reason I tried killing myself only once or twice was that I had to have all my small projects ready and apartment clean and organized to be able to leave it for others to take care of. I hated the thought of leaving a mess behind, like somehow my death would worse if I was judged for how messy I was. I didn’t want anyone to see me like that. Like I was all the time except when others came by.

And I still became hopeful at times, but it only gave me more ammo to call myself ugly little names. How stupid are you, you really think it’s going to be any different this time around?, I would think to myself, humiliate myself. And I loved hating myself, I got to a true kick out of it because when you’re mean to somebody else, people will not like you and someone will call you out on it. But when you do it to yourself, most people do absolutely nothing about and you feel all witty and realistic. Still climbing out of that hole because as it turns out, hating yourself doesn’t make you work harder forever and your life better. I just stopped doing all the things I truly loved and lost interest in most of living.

[adhdandshit]

Nerves and all that fun shit

We went to the movies yesterday and my nerves took over.

Firstly, the type of films that I am able to watch has gone down drastically from lets say ten years ago. I can’t watch the “boring” kind, meaning artistic and slow, because I get bored out of my mind. I can’t watch if it’s too violent, not gory but especially sexual violence I cannot watch (this though I’m not so sad about, I think it tells something good about you not being able to watch it, especially having that type of small trauma of my own). There are also many types of whole family movies that I don’t want to see, but I’ve hated those all my life, so why stop now? Animation, if well-written, works for me. But the one that I am truly disappointed in, counting also the “boring” movies, is movies with suspense (not detective stories, those I still love, and not talking about horror movies here). It gets into my bone and I just have to keep telling myself: It’s a movie, none of this is real, no matter what happens you’ll be alright. But it doesn’t help, my nerves have a life of their own and they’re living on the canvas in what’s happening there.

On top of going to the movies being slightly painful to me, when I walk out of there I’m completely drained. I usually drink a cup of coffee before a movie because otherwise I easily fall asleep in the theater and miss the whole flick or at least all the crucial parts of it. If the movie is the kind that I’ve described above, the caffeine only helps it to drain me and I walk out of there in a haze. That’s what happened yesterday.

Every single emotional thing that happened on the canvas, I was living through. But thing was, it wasn’t even one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. It was good but not sublime. Yet, when there was a threat of being caught for the main character, I could hardly breath. In fact, I had to do breathing exercises right then and there to cope and to be able to focus on the movie. And when walked out of there I felt slightly dizzy but mostly I just couldn’t communicated with my partner at all. He got worried about me because I became so strange and by the time we got home, all I wanted to do was sleep.

This is why I prefer super hero movies. They usually aren’t the best movies when it comes to plot or complex female character and such, but they’re so big-budget that they aren’t the worst either and at least they’re visually massive. But what’s best about them, is that they pump me up instead of draining me, and leaving the theater I’m already dreaming of training more and better. That’s what I love about them, they make better.

I don’t know what it is about my imagination and nervous system that makes me live all the fiction so vividly and I probably will never now fully. Yet there is something already clearer to me from yesterday. I have experienced, probably for years now from time to time, adrenaline fatigue. The amount of anxiety I live through everyday, the coffee I need to function at my job or my studies, or simply to leave the apartment in the morning, and my competitive nature plus the whole over active nervous system – it‘s quite clear why I feel burnout and overwhelmed all the time, dead-tired in the mornings and lethargic.

[adhdandshit]

Inconsistency

Beginning to write notes for this post in my notebook, I accidentally and not the first time took the wrong tram, realized it only after its path had parted ways with the one I was supposed to take and had to slightly run to get to the nearest stop of the right tram in order to be on time at my appointment. I was nearly on time, one minute past nine in the morning but it didn’t much console me since if taken the right one from the beginning I would have for once been early for the appointment and could have walked there with the feeling of having all the time in the world. I love being early for appointments and such, and yet I rarely am able to get myself going on time. Mostly I am simply and clearly late, sometimes cannot show up at all.

One of the emotionally hardest parts of AHDH is inconsistency. I can do something once and excel in it and yet the next time or the time after that goes terribly. And it’s not simply beginner’s luck which most people are quite familiar with, but the mere fact that sooner or later down the line, I will fail in this task no matter what it is. Whether I fail by not getting myself to do it or actually being unable to do it physically or simply not caring at all about it, doesn’t matter. In one way or another, I will fail.

If the changing surroundings or life in general would be the biggest factor behind my fail, I would have much easier time in accepting the glitches, but most of the time, it clearly isn’t. It is me. And that sucks.

So, not only are you unreliable to others but also to yourself. When I was younger I felt worse about being inconsistent when it came to meeting other people’s expectations, but now I feel worse for not meeting mine. I’m still not (at least I think I’m not, but who knows) exactly selfish, it’s just that I have also respect for my dreams and needs, not just for others’. And also, as you get older you come to realize that what you do doesn’t usually mean nearly as much to others as you think it will. I’m not talking about visiting a sick grandma here, but simply remembering to ask your friend when you two should go to the movies after planning on doing so. Other people forget things too and get busy too, and so they get it, even though (if neurotypical) they don’t really get it to the degree that make art of forgetting to simply respond to their messages.

What I hate about my inconsistency the most, is that I can’t make plans to do something nice but slightly hard and especially time consuming that lasts more than a day (like taking a course at the university) without getting anxious already. The moment I click the button to confirm, I start thinking: Is this going to be one of those times I finish the course some how dragging but do or one of those when I can’t even begin the first week of exercises? Since I entered uni, can’t really remember a course I work well on. There were two were I really tried and got 3/5 for both of them because I still couldn’t do my papers properly on time. The only grades that were better than that were for courses that were either too easy or too lightly graded. So, basically I feel like I haven’t done any good job at uni so far, and it’s killing me.

I don’t know to end this post because I’m still not sure if this is going to go away or be reduced through the right kind of solution-centered therapy and meds, or if I simply am this way and will remain so forever. Quite honestly, I don’t think I could take it.

[adhdandshit]

ADHD and the shitloads of other stuff

So, even though I have on some level realized that I have some form of attention deficit, actually comprehending that I have ADHD and I should really get it checked and treated helped me a lot. Because the only thing that I saw earlier was the inattention that was affecting my studies and career quite obviously. Yet reading about ADHD made it all the more painfully clear, and not the least concerning school and work.

There were so many other things on top of the inattention that I hadn’t noticed before learning that they were part of ADHD. I think the biggest of them was my impulsiveness. The fact that I had such a hard time resisting temptations unless when there was a clear award in the horizon when I was usually good that it (not always though, the prize had to be something I really wanted or the result of the exhaust of resisting at least).

Particularly painful this made all the times I cut corners only for it backfire big time and leaving me feel like the laziest idiot ever. I’m a hard worker when I can control myself and every one knows that. But then when things get truly exhausting, I can end up not asking something although I know I should, because I’m a little anxious as well, and then making wrong assumptions. There has been many situations like this at my jobs, but this one has particularly haunted me.

I was working at the post office as the Christmas help and I was doing really well. In fact, I was doing so well, on a few nights of those two weeks I was there in the night shift, they asked me to stay longer. I was also going to school during the day and sleeping only a few hours but I was powering through it all (what helped was that I was twenty-one and not twenty-six like now). This was my last night and I was happy thinking of all the money I would earn from this and then feel like the biggest champion on my Christmas holiday. This was important because I’ve always felt the need to exhaust myself before I can enjoy relaxing (more on this later). There were only a couple of hours if even that to go, and one of the other helps who had also stayed later with me, was told she could go home. There was no reason for me to assume it was me and there was so little time left, but I struggle with the thought “Did they mean me as well?” and before I knew it, I was getting out of there. Even then it felt like a horrible mistake (which it was, I was never hired as Christmas help again) but I couldn’t help myself.

Learning about ADHD put this into perspective. With all my willpower and rationality, I still just couldn’t help myself. It helped to know it wasn’t the kind of defect in me I had thought it to be.

Another part I’ve had real trouble with all my life, is temper. When I get into a mood, I get deep into it, and it’s hard to pull myself out of it. For example, if I’m happy about something I most likely can’t function at all because all I do is think about it. If it’s something small, it blows over in a couple of hours, but if it’s something big, I can be half-useless for days, sometimes even weeks. When I was in puberty, I really loved having crushes on people and then just floating in that feeling. If something did happen, it was exhilarating at first, but slowly when things got more mellow I usually lost interest. I was interest in the feeling than the people had all those feelings for. I know it sounds horrible, but it’s the truth.

The worst feeling, even worse than feeling depressed, is getting worried about something. I wallow in it. I can’t function because I can’t get my mind off it and sometimes I start even feeling depressed or like my body would be lead, just because I can’t get over it. And the things that bring me worry and anxiety can be the most tiniest things but it still blows out of proportions. 

Although the worrying and anxiety is what makes my life and being hardest, socially it’s not worst one – that is rage. When I was a kid, I hated losing games and took every little insult, or anything interpreted as such, to my heart. There was mostly two reactions: either I started screaming and lost my shit followed by an unstoppable sobbing or I turned to violence. I’m not proud of it, especially since the reaction was so out of scale with the crime, but once when a kid in my class in second grade told me I was stupid, I hit him and broke his nose.

Even though I had trouble with getting into fights, my biggest issue in school was that I couldn’t follow the rules of socialization and didn’t know how I’ve should have acted. I was talkative and social in many ways, so I easily made friends, but never was able to keep them. And it hurt, but at the same time I was obnoxiously certain of my own intelligence, talent and creativity, so like many kids with smarts but little social skills, I decided I didn’t need friends. I always liked adults better anyway and looking down on other made me feel strong even when felt horrible vulnerable. Looking at it know though, I probably would have done better getting help, being humbler and having at least a few friends for longer than a few months.

When I was fourteen I screamed at my health worker but at fifteen, I really started losing my shit. I wasn’t fighting at school anymore but I got angry at my teachers and broke things throwing them against the wall in my room. I tried my best to control it and stop it but it only made it worse. Nothing helped other than temporarily. And it’s a thing I’m still struggling with. But quitting sugar and cutting down caffeine consumption seems to be helping, so I’m hopeful. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised seen throwing a tantrum in grocery store at my best friend or partner for doing some extremely small other way than I would have liked. But I’m glad they’re both still around and some how tolerate all of this. And now that I’m doing the best I can and know that someday I will beat this thing, this part of my ADHD and anxiety. I am not going to turn into my father.

[adhdandshit]

Food, bodies and sport, part 1

I’ve tried quitting sugar, essential reducing sugar or quitting sugar for week days. None of those has it stuck and in less than a week, sometimes just after a half-day, I have lost it and chucked down sugar. Except this time.

It’s still fairly early to brag, but I’ve now been 23 days without sugary things. Some with slightly more added sugar than I would like have slipped into my diet (why did everyone at work have to want to go eat sushi?) but essentially I have been sugar free. In the future though, I’m gonna do this even better and do my best to cut all the white flour that I haven’t already and drastically reduce other grain products (especially wheat and rice) as well.

I’m still not looking for a paleo diet or something as extreme as that but I know this makes me feel better and so I want to continue this path. One reason why I’m going anywhere near paleo, is that I’m still dreaming of sticking to a vegan diet someday and not just that, but a fairly ecological vegan diet, which would more rely on things produced in Finland and those from the other side of world. With something as strict as paleo, I don’t think I’d have the energy and resources to keep it up.

If you on the other hand think this is extreme and wonder why don’t I just drastically reduce the sweet things but have to abstain completely, then I can tell what I’ve learned so far on this road and especially from finally succeeding in quitting. I am not one of those people who can do nice but easily rewarding things moderately. I either do way, way too much of them, or do none at all. And with sugar I was most of the time in former category.

My weight also has played a part in making this decision. Getting this out of the way, I’m not overweight and never have I really been. Most of my life I have been healthily well-shaped or “sopusuhtainen” like all the health care professionals always told me when I was growing up. Also I have muscles and always have had no matter how I’ve lived, whether I’ve exercised or not.

When I was in high school, I always weighted more than I wanted to but at some point managed to shake off that weight thanks to my coach (did judo at the time). Then during the exchange year at Belgium I gained it all back but lost it again at the end of the exchange year and the summer straight after it. At the hospital ward with severe depression I remember being skinnier than ever but feeling absolutely hollow inside. I hadn’t planned to lose the weight, not at least in the way I had done after a break up with my girlfriend a year and a half ago (this was when my eating was truly anorexic and I felt weak all the time, and hanging out with someone much sicker with an eating disorder didn’t help). The depression and the medication to it, did all the work.

I’m glad I had that experience, because now every time I look at myself and don’t like what I see or see skinny people on TV and hate the way I look or in any other way start going back to those ways of thinking, I remember how miserable I was not eating or when I saw myself in that mirror. I don’t ever want to feel that way again.

After the hospitalization until almost two years ago, my weight fluctuated between a 5-6 kilos margin. Sometimes I liked my body better, other times less, but at last I felt somehow in peace with myself (apart from a few things, but I’m going to write about them later when I feel like it). Then I got another medication next to the old one. It didn’t do anything to my appetite but it certainly did something to my metabolism because in a few months eating less sugar than I had before and eating other ways better as well, I gained 5 kilos on top of the higher weight in the fluctuation scale. And I haven’t been able to shake it off.

At first when the first kilos came, I thought it was muscle because I was at the gym more than ever. Then more came after them, I found new fat from my body and realized I couldn’t fit into many of my favorite clothes and the jeans I had loved felt like restraints on my legs. Realizing I was heavier than ever, although maybe not fattest because I had more muscle too, was stupefying. After a few nice years of loving walking naked and feeling sexy, I again felt like I didn’t want to go outside anymore and all those old feelings started knocking on my door again. I succumb to them like I used to but I still felt them as well as very insecure.

This is what brought me to find ways to get my metabolism to what it used to be. I haven’t eaten the medication for nine months now, although due to another much worse side effect, and I’ve read several books and articles about metabolism. I didn’t want to do anything unhealthy, irritating or short-term solution this time around. Then I learned what I have about sugar and insulin-resistance, and realized my keeping off weight had always been so hard for me, resisting sugary things and eating general even harder and doing something about these had felt so impossible.

Before Christmas lost most of the sugar from my diet, started limiting my meals but eating more at them and did a few fasts successfully. It all went great and I didn’t even miss sugar and was feeling like a champion. But then came Christmas. It wasn’t that I wanted to eat candy and other sweet things, but I felt like if I abstained from them, then I would have denied myself part of the relaxation of my childhood Christmases I’d had at my relatives’. So, I made myself eat to sweet things and after a couple of days my love for sugar was back.

I thought I’d stopping eating the sweet stuff after the holidays and wasn’t even worrying about it, because the fasts before the Christmas had felt so easy. But of course it never works that way. I couldn’t quit it again and couldn’t complete even a 24-hours fast. What made matters worse, was that I had to try to quit caffeine as well, because together with a double dosage of my asthma medication it made me aggressive. Or at least so I thought, because that has always turned better since quitting sugar. Still, I have decided to slowly limit my caffeine to a one cup of half-decaf per day and otherwise only decaf. When I will feel even more in control of the sugar situation, I’m going to try the fasting again, but for now I’m sticking to an almost sugar-free living.

What comes to my body image, it is now better than six months ago, but I’m still waiting to feel like my old sexy self again. I would love more than anything to be one of those people who felt sexy and good no matter what weight they are and I applaud and respected that, I certainly will never teach girls in our family anything else, but at the moment I’m not there, at least not yet. And that has to be okay too, because I’m not harming myself and I have enough things to worry about due to my ADHD to feel shitty about this too.

Since I remember really loving the fact that my SSRI meds made me not feel like eating and sometimes even feeling disgusted by the sight of food at TV, I am slightly worried that if or when I get meds for my ADHD (which I certainly need to finish my studies at uni) I will stop eating enough, But I feel confident that my rationality and good sense will win that fight.

[adhdandshit]

Prelude to food, bodies and sports

Like I’ve told before, my childhood’s fondest memories revolved around food (except getting book packages from a book club for pre-teens and teenagers – still love all the packages as well as books that come my way, but eating and reading is a tough combo). Even though since the age of 12 I’ve mostly been best described as some sort of vegetarian, the two things I have loved more than anything since childhood have been sweet stuff and meat. My uncle’s partner remembers the morning after my aunt’s wedding when all the adults were hungover and went downstairs only to see me sitting at the table with a steak and a piece of cake, both of which I had helped myself to, on a plate. “All the best and just the best”, well-described me (and in many ways still does).

When I was a kid, my sweet tooth was unsatisfiable. Like with most children, candy was always the best. There’s another story of me eating my whole weekend’s candy at one sitting and then going on to jump with my little brother in our parents’ bed and, of course, followed by a puking episode in the bed. “Why should there be a limit to all the good things in life?” I probably thought.

When things are shitty and you really like food, food and TV are the heavenly combo to take it all away for a one tiny moment. Of course the moment doesn’t last very long, creates all sort of havoc in your body and only leaves you feeling worse and wanting more. But when I was younger, all I cared about was the weight it brought.

I will probably always remember that day when I was around ten or eleven and my puberty was just kicking in when we had our school health inspections. Before that day I had been almost exactly the same height and weight as my then best friend. Yet, when we compared the results after the inspection, the scale became my enemy. I wasn’t taller but my genes had played a trick on me. I was then around 8 kilos heavier then she was and it felt sudden although we hadn’t in fact thought about our weights for the past year.

Even though I knew, it was mostly due to puberty, I couldn’t help but wanting to lose it all away and only consoling myself with “I’m going to make sure when she hits puberty, I’ve stayed in this shape, so we’ll then again be the same weight.” As easily predicted, we weren’t then and we aren’t know, nor have we been friends since slightly after this. But what mattered wasn’t that I was the same weight as she, it was that I wasn’t anything more than the ideal weight and I saw her as that.

Don’t want to talk about all the different forms of eating disorders, I’ll just say this: I have eaten six donuts all by myself in one night, I have ran at night to burn all the extra calories and more than once have I eaten next nothing and made myself ready just lie on the floor unable to function. All of this got me drinking way too much caffeine at seventeen, which in return gave me a whole other dimension of anxiety and panic attacks.

In high school started also my legs not working at short periods of time. It’s hard to explain how it goes, but it comes, happens for a one or two weeks and then goes away. And it doesn’t happen as often and as bad as it used to happen. The first times I remember though: I would hear my alarm clock, try to get up to shut it down but my other wouldn’t work. It’s always the same, my other leg works while the one next to it doesn’t. It takes usually a few for it to get better enough for me stand and get something out of the leg but sometimes it takes even ten minutes.

From what I can tell, it comes when my eating and exercising don’t see eye to eye, and mostly when I’m simply not eating very well. So, probably it’s due to some deficiency, but once that described it to a doctor, they weren’t really worried about and it has gone better and rarely comes anymore, so that makes me not that worried about it either. But when I was fourteen or fifteen and it happened the first time, I was scared. Anyone would be when one of their limbs doesn’t work.

[adhdandshit]

TV, boredom and leaving the house

Before I truly realized I have ADHD and started reading about it days on end, there were many things I couldn’t quit no matter how hard I tried but could never figure out why. And then there were most things that I did always quit no matter how much I enjoyed them, while both made me feel like the laziest loser ever.

People don’t make these feelings easier. They tell you things that have worked for them and/or worked for other neurotypical people. What they don’t realize is that they won’t work for all neurotypical people, because we’re all different in many ways and even less will they work for some with ADHD or with an autism spectrum disorder or such. I know they mean well, but mostly they have only made me feel like crap for those things not working for me. I can’t count how many times I’ve thought “I’m seriously broken and can never be repaired. Why am I always like this, why can’t I just get over my shitty childhood and go on with my life? Why can’t I even lift my ass off this chair when I know there are other things I have to do?” What I’ve only know realized is that for years it hasn’t been as much about my childhood as it has been about an unmanaged ADHD creating havoc in my life.

One of the few things I have never been able to quit is TV. One of the warmest things I remember from my childhood where the afternoons alone at home after school before my parents came home. I would make something good, like heat nuggets from the fridge or bake muffins or a cake, and then eat them while watching TV. Doesn’t take a genius to see a connection with this and the fact that I developed both eating disorders and a more than healthy relationship with television. (I’ll write later about the eating disorder part.)

TV shows and books became the only real escapes for me. When I was in elementary school, it was still fairly easy to stick to reading, which is harmful in the way staring at screens is, and you usually learn something. I didn’t also play computer and video games, but they’re never been a problem for me for long. I always grow bored of them and at some point quit playing. But TV rarely did that, and when the Internet came big time, there were no longer any need to watch your favorite show at one particular time or tape it, and there were no commercial breaks. And so, in high school I started to become sucked into the reality of the TV shows and from then on it only got worse. I had no close friends, so all I did was watch TV and listen to music when I wasn’t at home watching TV. School days went by with me in my head still living in the shows’ stories. I would go over them again and again, and write scenes of my own, but only in my head.

The truth is, this wasn’t the first time I had been stuck in my head. Ever since I can remember, I can recall being bored in other peoples company and preferring the moments when I was walking home from school or walking around in our kitchen and creating drama and stories inside my head. From then ‘till now, I do it to fall asleep or not to have a terrible time at the dentist’s. And it works.

I know watching TV is pretty useless, takes a lot of time and makes rest of it much worse, while also being a health hazard. I also know, that the more you watch TV, the less you enjoy it, but I can’t quit. Not watching makes my skin crawl and whenever I have quit for a while, I’ve always felt empty.

Many smart and well-educated people have told me, TV isn’t addicting. In some ways that is probably true, it isn’t in the same as heroine or nicotine, it doesn’t give you physical withdrawal symptoms. And again, this has made me feel all the shittier (I curse a lot, I know, get over it) about myself “If it isn’t addictive, why can’t I quit with all the books I’ve read and research I’ve done? I’m must be really lazy or an extremely dull person.” Only know with all that I’ve read about ADHD, I’ve realized why it has gone like this.

Firstly, and this is the part that I’ve realized already over ten years ago, and that my therapists and psychiatrists have found reasonable, is that the need to escape to watching TV was real at the time and one of the only possible solutions. I had shitty time at home, I was bullied at school and my own head only played over and over again thoughts about my trauma, so what else was I to do to survive. But this hasn’t been the case for nearly a decade now.

The professionals thought I just had a hard time letting go of the comfortable habit, and it’s true that it is particularly comforting when things are stressful. But so is exercise, yet I rarely over do it. And I turn to TV even when there is something extremely exciting I really rather be doing, and waste my day staring at it. Outer countability, like a job, works for little while, but then the follow through becomes hard as I become bored at the job, no matter the job.

Not just because of TV though not unrelated, I have a terrible time leaving my apartment. This has been the case from high school to this day. With rarely any rational or irrational fears or dreads holding me back, I feel it emotionally draining and terrible leaving the house. Many days I simply can’t do it, and most days I do it late or very, very late.

When I was younger and my body image was ten times worse than it is now, I sometimes couldn’t leave the house because I thought I looked so disgusting and pathetic, fat and ugly. I even missed one of my closest friend’s (who I had a huge crush on) graduation party since I couldn’t make myself leave the house. But this isn’t the case anymore. Even though I am rarely happy with how I look, feel confident enough to go outside and be around other people. Now it’s really just leaving the house. But why?

I don’t think it’s about comfort, that I would feel insecure not being at home. I feel just fine when I leave, I don’t get panic attacks anymore going to school like I didn’t in secondary school, nor do I get dissociative episodes. I feel nervous at work interviews and a little at lectures and school work shops, but the first is only natural and the second comes from the dread and terrible memories of being bored out of my mind and doing horribly in these settings for years and years. So that doesn’t help me much either. The school is factor but a fairly small one.

One of the things I hate about leaving is having to remember to take all the little things you need during the day. Another small factor. Also I’m not very good at looking for them, so it takes time which makes it all the more tedious. But still, only one more small factor.

The only real problem I have been able to come up with, is being bored. When I walk out of the front door, walk to the bus stop and wait for the bus, I can’t do anything interesting. I can’t watch TV or read a book. And it’s horrible. If you don’t have ADHD, you’re probably thinking “So this is your big problem? Get over it, you can’t be entertained through all your life. I don’t like doing the dishes, I find it boring, but I still do it.” Well, not going to get into it about house work (I’ll give you hint, don’t do very well sticking to it) but I’ll tell you: If only it was so easy, then I would rather suffer through it and not feel like a lazy shit. But for now, this is the best I can do and I think at least most people with ADHD know in one way or another what I am talking about.