A Lifelong Battle…. A Sigh of Relief.

For thirty-five years I have felt abnormal.  I have seen doctors, psychologists and counsellors trying to determine what this abnormality I experience daily is labelled. Thirteen years ago I was finally diagnosed with “Generalized Anxiety Disorder” aka GAD.  I was prescribed Zoloft.  It helped, not 100%, but it helped reduce the fight or flight response I felt in many situations where that response was not warranted.  It took away the emotional volatility as well.  Unfortunately, it still did not make me feel “normal” and over time I learned to deal with the urge to run or fight in most scenarios by rationalizing the situation and my feelings associated.  I have since been off the meds.

For thirty-five years I have lived feeling on edge, like a bomb was going to go off any moment and I would be ready (to run, not anything else, I am not that organized).  As if I was going to internally combust out of nowhere.  I liken the feeling to someone who has drank too much coffee and feels like they are bouncing off the walls; coffee or not, I always feel like that and always have.  I cannot sit still, never could, and thus the reason a movie in a theatre sounds more like torture than enjoyment.  I need to be able to do something else, even if it is to run and get a drink in the middle of the movie (pause was invented for people like me) or play a game, or do sit-ups, or change position 400 times in my chair, or go bake cinnamon buns for no apparent reason.  (My daughter suffers from this too; she watches TV upside down sometimes and has only ever made it through two or three full length movies in her near eight years of life).   

School was a joke for me.  I think back and wonder what happened there.  I recall in Grade 7 staring off into space in social class and noticing that if I stared at the back of a person’s head long enough, I could see a slight yellow light coming from their body against the chalk board.  Some people refer to it as an aura… I am pretty sure it is body heat and thus the reason some people have a larger yellow light than others… they have a higher body temperature.  I never could prove this as most people don’t take lightly to being asked to take a body temperature in the middle of class… and Mr. Chomick, well I am pretty sure he wouldn’t have appreciated it either.  At least I was quiet in that class.  I was in an academic school.  I wish that on nobody, but I also did not realize that studying four hours per night wasn’t a normal junior or senior high behaviour to get a pathetic 70% (pathetic in an academic school with that much effort put forth when everyone else had 90’s). 

Fast forward to high school; no longer in the academic program (my choosing), but I discovered something called cutting class.  I discovered I could skip every class other than test days, and still pull off the same grades.  It was easier than being told to shut up and go to sleep (yes, this did occur) or be called on to answer a question when I was not paying any attention to the teacher at all and showing my inattention.   The coordinator at school let me get away with it because my grades were not suffering.  I graduated in three years with my advanced diploma, which is more than I can say for many and really makes no sense.  I can say I worked my butt off though and taught all the material to myself to do this.  My worst class was social studies and I memorized what I needed to until exam time, whereas of Grade 12 diploma exams that part of my brain was purged of all memory (well most, I can still recite full text book pages word for word from Grade 9 and I don’t have a clue what they even mean).  

Then we skip forward to university/college.  The life everyone dreams of.  Well most.  All it meant was longer, bigger classes to avoid and not pay attention in.  I passed most of them, again by teaching the material to myself.  I then clued in to the fact that it would make more sense if I did distance learning, rather than pay to go to a campus.  I enrolled in Athabasca University and my marks were an impressive 89%+.  I got bored though and with three core classes left for my BCOM, I dropped out.  I was working in the bar in an oil field town and it was much more exciting anyway.  In fact, waitressing in the bar was my favorite job to this day.  It never got boring.  There was no paperwork (other than a count at the end of the shift) and I got to run and talk and be me, basically. 

So why quit?  Well, it takes a toll on the body and you can’t survive doing it forever.  It truly is a young girl’s game.  Patience is required, as well as you need to walk in heels carrying a flat of beer on one arm over your head while dodging drunkards and not spilling a drop.  Hindsight makes me giggle now and I realize my choice of occupation afterwards wasn’t the brightest when we are talking about who I truly am.  I took a job as an accounting clerk in a seniors’ lodge.  A job that requires sitting still for 8 hours per day, doing paper work exclusively and being isolated.  In fact I had a few of those jobs.  Most of them I got fired from for being “unprofessional” or I quit because of my hatred for them.  It all makes so much sense now.

Back when I was little, my parents called me “Yappy”.  I talked incessantly and loud.  I still do talk a lot when I get going.  Sometimes I don’t talk at all though, because I know I go overboard and often I get emotional.  I have had a hard time curbing this behaviour my entire life, to not interrupt when an idea comes into my head.  To try and pay attention to what the other person is saying without losing the thought I tried so desperately to keep from interjecting until it was my turn.  Waiting for my turn, has always been a tough one.  To focus on the speaker and hear what they are saying without asking them to repeat themselves because I was either too focussed on the thought that might flee or off in another world.  Or trying to put together everything they just said when in reality I only heard bits and pieces.   (I think my daughter has this same problem, judging by her responses most of the time). 

My Facebook “About Me” said it all; I had it posted for years. .. It was along the lines of my thriving on chaos and doing a million things at once.   One time I got bored, I created two companies within a week.  Not because I had nothing better to do, my house is always a disaster, I had a toddler (high-energy one at that) and a zillion unfinished projects, but I needed that other thing.  The one that would make me happy because I had gotten bored of the rest.  Off the top of my head all of those projects are still lying around incomplete:  a painting of an elk (to be fair, I thought I had finished it, but it was returned to have the antlers fixed), a painting of a jaguar, a painting of a sunset, a painting of a dragon, numerous drawings, a wolf cross stich, a mail box, a set of painted pots for Jen’s mom (she reminded me about.. I started them in 2004, I think), a painted soap for a lady I know in Ontario, one of the two companies (I did put the one to bed), and I am sure if I was to go into the craft room I would find many more.  Moral of the story, I get bored, distracted and forget what I was doing.  I have also used the expression that “I saw something shiny” many times to explain my behaviour, because that is me in a nutshell.  Facebook has been a world of beauty for me because if I post something it holds me accountable for my day.  Plus when people comment under my plans, I see the original post via my phone and it reminds me of what I was supposed to be doing before I saw that something shiny.

To many, I appear productive, when in reality I spend more time running around in circles chasing my tail.  I have turned to cooking for many reasons, but ultimately it is therapy.  I don’t even like to do it.  However, it is something I have to see through to the end.  I cannot stop midway through the process or it would be wasteful.  It is something that the end result creates a sort of mini victory for me.  Some cook “with love” (whatever that means), I cook for therapeutic reasons, both for my soul and our health issues.  And if I wasn’t doing that, I would be doing something else, most likely less productive to get rid of my energy.  And as a bonus, preparing stuff from scratch saves money.  Win-win-win-win. 

So, why now?  Why after thirty five years have I finally got the answer?  Well, I knew my daughter was struggling in life.  I could see it.  Me, being me, I had to find out why.  I observed her, I noted her behaviours, I analyzed and investigated.  I figured out the issues she was facing.  I researched and researched (I have a tendency to do this too until I know EVERYTHING about something).  I watched some more.  Then I realized that I was staring myself in the face.  All the struggles she faces on a daily basis are mine too, just manifested differently.  Where she uses gymnastics, I cook.  She’s extremely creative and loves to draw and paint as much as her mother, so much so, that we created an art/craft room for her and me.  She is messy and disorganized; my house is messy and disorganized and neither of us have a clue what to do with our stuff.  I have filing piled up from probably a year ago, she has papers all over.  She talks a lot, and is loud.   The list goes on and on. 

So, as the school deals with her process, I went and sought my own help.  On November 7^th, I will get a confirmed diagnosis and a plan of action whether it is meds (which I am open to, if it will help me), diet, behavioural modifications, etc.  If it makes life easier, I am for it.   At this point I am just happy I know what the answer is and that I am not crazy for thinking I am different all this time.   And I will get the support required to get my life organized after living chaos forever.  And my daughter will get the help she needs too and perhaps her life will be easier a lot earlier as she’ll develop the strategies needed to live in our world.

The above is just touch on all the reasons and behaviour issues I have had throughout my life.  They are the main ones at this point.  The above are the behaviours of a female with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.  It’s funny how it took a child to point out the obvious.  The Mental Health Therapist that is going to be giving me life strategies to cope with this giggled at the irony as well. 

To new beginnings!   I am finally relieved and ready to take on the world in a whole new way.

You may wonder why I am posting this.  Well, mental health has such a bad reputation and is rarely discussed.  If this post helps anyone to get the help they also need, well it did it's job.  Sometimes, the struggle really is not necessary when there is help available.