The Elephant in the Room

Cant sleep. Vivid dreams are waking me up. These lead to thoughts which pretty much seal the deal for going back to sleep. I then lay awake, my head racing with the minutia of my life overwhelming me.

I have to face it. I have AD/HD or some incarnation of it.

I've had it my whole life. The people who know me can attest to that (I hear a collective "DUH"). As a child I was a ball of energy literally bouncing off the walls. My thoughts were everywhere. I would freak out sometimes for no reason. Embarrassing stuff I cant really explain. I wasn't much into school though I feel I was pretty smart for a little kid. Bad test taker though. On second thought I actually hated school for the majority of my life.

I will begin this by saying that I refuse to create an excuse for outcomes in my life. I know I am wholly responsible for this present moment and what has lead me here. But I am nearly certain that some of my experiences and patterns of behavior are directly related to my wiring.

If I think about it globally and scan certain elements of my life it is ridiculously clear that I have this disorder. Ive been researching it since I woke up and a lot of the resources available are about AD/HD in children but there are a few for adults living with it.

It makes sense. My inability to complete projects, disorganization, an almost allergic reaction to the mundane, lack of sound financial responsibility, restlessness, failed relationships (or letting them even begin), I could go on.

I often have so much shit going on in my head that it sort of paralyzes me from taking action. And the lack of order in my life caused by this stagnation creates more disorder in my head which leads to a downward vicious spiral. And fixing all that is a pretty boring process so my desire for change is clipped by my disgust with uninteresting WORK.

Its not that I'm lazy. Its just that when something feels like WORK to me, I literally have a part of my focus that I have to grasp for. Its a battle. Its like wrestling that hyper active 4-year-old to the ground and making him do something he refuses to do, except this time you understand why its in your best interest.

And then I start creating these scenarios of possible outcomes. Like a bunch of pop up windows that you cant control, things start popping up in the way of the path of my desired outcome. I have to close them out quickly and not focus on them or else I'm stuck again. Sometimes Ill even forget what I'm doing. I lose things around the house, I walk into my kitchen with the sink running which I turned on an hour ago and had walked away from. Neatly folded piles of clothes in random places. Once I found the remote in my refrigerator.

It might also explain why Ive never had a clear goal for anything in my life. Im supposed to have clearly definable goals. Seems simple. I try. I just cant picture final outcomes easily. Yes I have goals but they are all short term and seem to not really have much of an overreaching purpose. Everything interests me. I'm too distracted to set concrete goals and understand why I want them. I'm like a damn goldfish.

The problem is this disorder is clouded with controversy. Bad parents medicating their kids for no reason, people using it as an excuse for failure, or some other shortcoming. It's actually a fairly humorous subject for most. It was for me even. I joke about it all the time. I have ADD etc etc. HaHaHa.

Well fuck man, I do. And if I don't start working towards a way to get a hold of it, its going to get me. It goes all the way down to my relationships, my finances, my very HEALTH and vitality.

I'm still wrapping my head around this and will surely be waxing on about it ad nauseum. I need to research this more. But god is it boring reading. ;)