Last time I had a Blogger blog, was 4yrs back.
Good lord! A lot's changed in that time!I have nothing poignant to state. I enjoy reading when I can make time for it, but, I am not a bookophile. Nor am I an English lit major.
I was an art major, and proud of it.
I began writing because of my ADHD, when I was only diagnosed a month before my very last semester at university. A tad late in the game, I must confess.
Simply put, I have a lot of noise inside my head, and I need to empty it out. Like clearing the cache out on your browser.
Being an impoverished Latino kid, I had no idea what ADHD was. Mental issues were what rich people had, not us though! That is, until my 'white' college classmates who had it went on to explain to me the benefits of Ritalin. How without it, they'd never complete their tasks and the fear that they'd drop out of our hideously expensive college due to lack of completion.
I asked one of them, "So theoretically speaking, if you stopped taking these pills tomorrow...what would happen?"
Friend: "I'd never finish my painting. (we went to art school) I'd pick up this thing, (a pencil holder) drink all my orange juice. I'd forget about that thing, or where I put it. Then I'd pick up the remote and watch television for days. Then I'd wander around campus; forget my class schedule. Probably fail out of my classes for non-attendance. Then I'd get back to finishing my painting. Then I'd get distracted again."
Sounded like the whole of my life.
This damn thing plagued my life, from the cradle to the present. Good grades, despite poor execution. Lot's of A's and just as many C's. (because I didn't/ couldn't finish) My teacher stated this and I knew she was right. Back then, we chalked it up to a lack of discipline.
In our public school system, it was unheard of. I had no such 'help'. I just saw my classmates getting ahead with pills and therapy while I got left behind. It was time for affirmative action! So! I took inventory of my own sad state, perused through my healthcare provider's thick-ass book of listed professionals, combing the psych section, and began dialing psychiatrists in the greater New York City area.
Evidently, there was a widespread stigma at the time about ADHD. About how it was laughed at by many health care professionals. How generally the whole of the public didn't think it was real, and all in your head. Which explained why I never got my many phone calls returned by any of these shrinks.
"Just do your homework!"; "Stop doodling and pay attention!"; "Quit looking out the window!"; these repetitive messages became ingrained in my mind from an early age. None of which helped.
I made the classic mistake of confiding in a close friend, also a non-believer, about how my thoughts are so intrusive that I cannot get any work done to completion.
"So what? That happens to me too!" says Ms.3.5 GPA/ Dean's List, with impeccable grades to tout.Many years later she would tell me in conversation that a close family member has it, and how serious it all is. Yet she had forgotten that I had professed my own condition to her, which she wrote off like it was nothing. Seriously?!
"No dude, it's like 16 television sets are turned on inside my fucking brain, and I can't watch all of them, so I take in 3 min. of each channel and move on to the next." This was my response. Often. To many loved ones.
I mean, if it's bad enough if you can't even do one goddamn thing and see it through (like READING ONE PAGE OF ANYTHING, like my cable bill?!) so you know it's high time to see a doctor!
Well, when I finally pegged down one psychiatrist, I recounted my experiences briefly during that 1st meeting. I told her that I had suspected I had ADD. She shook her head, and told me that I didn't have it. Rebuffed! And hey, let's schedule a meet for next week.
Next week turned into 10 weeks.
By the end of which she told me that I did in fact, have ADHD.
We both agreed not to have me take funny pills, as they all do have strong side effects. She recommended I get myself organized.
- Organize my room.
- Organize my schedule.
- Ultimately organize my thoughts.
- Learn to sift through all that mishmash of information.
Well it worked! I tossed my junkmail. I cleaned my bedroom. Regularly threw out the trash & recycling. I gave away what I didn't want anymore, including that homemade coffee table.
My room was now dust free, clutter free.
Less crowding meant stress, meant less anxiety.
Still, it didn't fix the ADHD problem, just alleviated it a little.
Now this was to become the culmination for many lifelong issues I began enduring...
Life! It gets in the way!
I made the mistake of prematurely moving in with my lover, who was the messiest, most disorganized person ever.
This added stress back into my life.
And mess.
Our apartment transformed into a shitstack of strewn papers and littered coat hangers that formed patterns upon the wooden floors.
It did not help. Organization goes right down the drain.
Other things that didn't help: chasing people down for freelance money; getting priced out of our neighborhoods; a landlord that went M.I.A. and left our building to go into foreclosure (nobody knew); layoffs; fewer and fewer jobs appearing even with calling in all favors; scam bill collectors; getting mugged; health issues; friends who aren't there for you because they'd rather go out and get drunk during your time of need; indifference...
I moved several times during this relationship, which ended a few traumatic years later. During these years, I had accomplished nothing worth of merit. My art had taken a backseat, as crises of import kept taking center stage. Life knocked me down so hard on my ass, many more times. But I had zero time for my art, as I was immersed in my lover's endless problems and my own growing depression. Years wasted. For nothing.
My art was my passion, and now it laid by the wayside, like a forgotten dream upon waking...
Too melodramatic?
Moved back home because, fuck! Nowhere else to go in my destitute, and emotionally shaky state of mind. The culmination of stress, stress, more stress, sprinkled with failure and regrets. A big side order of self-doubt, to go!
Moving back home was supposed to be temporary. And I knew that if I did, I'd get mixed up in my family's shenanigans. Things you don't want to involve yourself in, because you can't look away, or walk away from oncoming disaster.
It was every bit the big mistake I knew it would turn out to be.
I returned with a bruised ego, feeling like the biggest loser in the world. Penniless, and with a broken spirit and psyche to match. Jobless and loveless. By this point in my life, I realized I had made the classic mistake of having given my entire worth to another person out of love, such that, when it came to an end I had nothing left to give anybody.
My worth disappeared.
Who was I?
I had lost my identity in the process.
What did I want out of life? I don't know anymore?!
I had no idea who I was anymore. I was a walking zombie.
Everything felt unreal. Noises, people talking, paying for train fare...nothing was real. It all felt like watching a vignette of some character's life on a movie screen.
Disconnection.
If I moved my arm, I could not process the moving of said arm, nor could I feel air resistance swirling around it.
Unreal. That I could not feel anything.
And throughout that horrible life transition, I did finally make my way back home, tail between legs. A place I swore in a million years I'd never return to.
Once home, I plummeted into the depths of despair. ADHD be damned!
It's difficult not to feel like a victim of circumstance when life knocks you down so often.
Early life crisis!
But in those days, smiling was forced and strained. Keeping a positive attitude seemed like a farce, and I was the cruel joke. I had lost my social graces, as most folks do when living in isolation. So if I talked on the phone with a friend, I sounded like some crazy person talking out the side of their ass.
While I managed to wrangle a temp job, which was amazingly stressful, the boss didn't renew my contract by the end of my trial period. To be honest, I had no patience for that job, and it dawned on me later, that it was much too soon to return to the world of 9-5 since I was a psychological mess. That I was let go didn't faze me. However, the resulting feelings of failure culminated into the shit cherry, on top of the crap cake that was my life at that point.
I quit smiling altogether. I took to the bottle.
I took to several bottles in fact, including the cooking sherry.
I completely went into shut down; 1st socially, then mentally, physically, and lastly, emotionally.
Unsurprisingly, I spent those days seeing the bottom of many wine bottles, and somehow discovered blogging and Twitter in the process. (this was the beginning of social media in 2008) Hiding in my family home's childhood bedroom, never seeing daylight for weeks. Growing pale and desolate, I convinced myself that my family would find me soon, turned into a dessicated mummy in my bedroom. One that wasted away due to ennui, like some sordid story to end in the 'weird' section of the newspaper.
My weight plummeted to dangerous lows...think Christian Bale in The Machinist. Lowest point in my life, and I dare not repeat the morose thoughts in my head at the time, out of a sense of tremendous shame.
(a whole bunch of weird shit happened in between that knocked me out of my dark state, but I'll save that for another post ;-))
Fast track to a few more years later...
I lifted myself out of the darkness and rediscovered my spirituality and my faith. Began an online store selling tshirt designs. It made me a bit of money, but not enough yet to get out of the financial crap hole I fell into. There's a new lover in my life now. And I made new friends.Now I take care of my elderly folks, of whom have a wide array of health complications. I juggle it with my store responsibilities, but it seems family needs keep coming first. The juggle is a constant struggle for the ADHD person.
I forgot to mention, that while I was in university I bought a book on ADHD. It had some very real, sobering facts about this condition, with test results on subjects done over a 30 year period: that many are faced with poor life prospects, some of which fall hard into addictions and a life of crime. I was not only disappointed in learning this, but I made a decision not to allow myself to fall prey to such things. That despite the economic downturn of the endless war in the middle east, and they damn real estate crash, that I'd never lose my flame of passion again.
Shit happens, and we cannot afford to get sidetracked.
I've yet to forgive myself for allowing my self-doubt, the drama of fools, and less than virtuous people who doused it in the first place.And with that, a promise never to allow myself to fall any further.
It's not accurate to summarize my life as a failed adult.
Rather, I'm not done failing just yet!
You gotta fail several times before you finally get successful! Now that I feel like I'm closer to my goals more so than ever before, I got a feeling this can be achieved. Life isn't so cluttered or hopeless as it once felt. And I've streamlined my life and cleaned it all up; spiritually, mentally, physically. So!
Onward, we go!
A very interesting thing mentioned in the book: that a vitamin rich in omega-3 fatty amino acids helped 'calm' down symptoms of ADHD. So off to the health food store I went! Supposedly the omega-3's feed the brain the same amino acids that developing fetus' need to grow into healthy babies. It is found in flax seed oil capsules (for vegans) and fish oil capsules.
My eye doctor also recommended it to help heal my dry-eye symptoms. I gotta tell ya, it does work for my eyes. Also, after some time of introducing them in my diet, I did notice I was exceedingly alert. Like caffeine alert. I lost some weight.
But it had another side effect...
IT GIVES ME CRAZY-VIVID DREAMS.
Things so crazy, I can't make this shit up! And some I've written into notebooks. The ones I can remember, I just memorize.
One of those was the entire story plot for my current book!
Today, I find myself writing a story. I'm not doing vampires, werewolves, teen romance, zombies, dystopia, or any myriad of popular topics. Boring! I'm writing the story I saw in my dream, and that's that.
Currently, I am at 286 pages. Let's see where this crazy train goes.
