Recently, I was diagnosed with ADD or ADHD. To be honest, I don’t know what the difference is and I can’t bother myself to figure it out. All I do know, is that it wasn’t a surprise to find out that what I knew all along was in fact true. Being keto definitely helps, but I’ve found that it also makes me wildly depressed unless it is vegan keto and then my hair falls out because I can’t get enough fats or whatever my hair needs to not up and vanish.
I don’t want to use this as an excuse for my behaviors, but I hope it explains something about me. Sometimes people prescribe explanations for stuff I do or don’t do to intentional, and I can assure you, it isn’t that. I’m just trying to make everything work and sometimes doing a great job and sometimes not.
Life wasn’t always riddled with forgetfulness and the need for a person to be my wrangler. When I was younger, I was the top performing kid in school once they figured out there was in fact something inside of me. My mother (Patricia) was told when I was born that I wouldn’t be smarter than a 10 year old at best, so she and everyone around me talked very slow or in whispers when I was around. This in turn caused me to choose to be mute. I think the medical term is called selective mutism. So, I didn’t talk much until I was 5 out of fear that words had too much gravity, and secretly, I kind of liked the odd attention I did or delightfully, didn’t receive. It made my experience of the world immediately more interesting. I formed the opinion pretty early on that people can expect you to do things, but it doesn't mean you *have* to, and that was a boundary I always liked to push to see just how far I could go.
When the doctor told me that he believed I have ADDDDDDDDDHDHDHBO or whatever it is, I was excited to try the drugs so I could see if somehow I would be different or improved in some way. I mean, who doesn’t want to be better somehow?
Well, the first day was wonderful and I felt incredibly productive and focused. The next day I had a seizure. That was the end of the drug experiment. I won’t be touching those anymore. The seizure however was beautiful, haunting and memorable. Its an experience I don’t regret having and luckily I fell down and didn’t harm myself.
Whenever life throws me curve balls, I don’t get sad. I immediately think about how my new condition might be beneficial if I were to look at it in different ways. With my stroke, I reimagined what walkers could look like and I empathized with the population around us that can barely get around in the world, but yet through force and will get to where they are going.
My sight was almost gone and I thought for a week or so that I may never see again, however I became curious about how the world feels, smells and how I would experience it in a whole new way. I was definitely relieved when my vision returned and became one image instead of two, but I prepared myself not for the worst but the best of a bad outcome.
When I had covid, I lost my taste. Everything was hot or cold or a texture and without any discernible flavor. So my choices were crunchy, smooth, soft, creamy and I could add ice or heat it up for more excitement. I realized I could live that way if I had to and it became less of an issue.
This deficit business makes me who I am and I’m proud of who I am, but I’m not proud of disappointing other people or letting people down because I’m a space cadet. I do the best to augment myself with assistants, tools, routines and will try just about any system I see others deploying, however I am always looking for a way to make it better. It seems I can’t just accept it and I think its because it impacts others around me and thus triggers emotions in me that I don’t want to feel.
I’d really love to not carry this guilt around. So, I guess this is my way of starting this internal change and thought process. Maybe people need to lower their expectations of me or look at me like I have a disability and cut me some slack. I’ve fixed many of the top complaints about me because I’m incredibly lucky and well resourced. I can’t imagine living without someone managing my calendar for example. The time lords decide where I will be based on some simple guidelines that I give them. Parameters. I then don’t have the cognitive load of thinking about something I don’t want to think about.
So why now? Why talk about this now? Well, I was so embarrassed that I lost the motivation to write up every episode of Cobra Kai. I was so fired up and manic about that show that I wanted to tell the world what I saw and how I interpreted it. What I probably shouldn’t do in the future is make public plans. I have many secret plans that very few people know about, and I execute on them all of the time and if I don’t, I only let myself down. If I tell people, the ones I fail on eat me alive. I’d love for that not to be the case. So, I think I have to will it to be not an issue.
I’m tired of avoiding writing here because of some perception that I’ve let someone down or that I failed in some way. The issue is there are multiple people inside of us. We aren’t just one person. The person who make the New Years resolution isn’t the same person who is standing in front of the fridge lacking willpower. They both make us who we are but we can in fact control them, if we really try, or we can also just let it go and get comfortable with who all of those people are.
I’m not going to finish my write up on Cobra Kai. I’ve lost the motivation, but I haven’t lost the motivation to write, so I’m going to just apologize and move on. It is what it is. Now that is behind me after fretting about it for more than a year, I can start doing what I want to do right now - today. That Cyan was so last year.
Onwards!
Thank you for putting in writing a lot of my behaviors! Never apologize for being you! Reading this perked up my Day:) Especially, when you dropped the old school term "Space Cadet"