I Give Up

Men. I can't stand them. It's true to the readers of this blog that I've become desperate. Is it general anxiety disorder, depression, ADD or simply a wacky personality? I don't know, but the serial dating is only adding to the anxiety and not lessening it—especially after scrolling through the MySpace site and noticing all of these pregnant friends. So unfair.

The new shrink is a woman with an 80s hairdo and really big horsey teeth. She seems a bit clueless on how to handle me, although she did tell me she was an expert in ADD and anxiety. She asked me why I had a dozen jobs over the past 10 years. Well, I did tell her I have ADD, right? She responded that she didn't know a thing about me, that we should start from square one. Why was I here, and what did I want to get out of this? I told her that everything was a big mess, like Dorothy's home after the tornado blew through.

She asked me how she could help, and suggested that I bring in my supply closet so we could sort through the mountains of calendars, notebooks, the litany of lists and more lists. I told her I've tried nearly everything. Programming dates into the cell phone, into the free email accounts, into Outlook. Not to mention the one-notebook method, into which I literally throw all notes, thoughts, and those pages I'll tear out of magazines, thinking, I want to do that.

This morning, after swallowing the ADHD medication, I had new thoughts. Maybe I’d be a comedic writer, like a Tina Fey. I'd learn Turkish. I'd join the Millionaire Matchmaker club. I had a million and one plans—and no means to start the engine. Once again, lots of beginnings, middles, and no ends.

I had dinner with the 65-year-old friend yesterday, whose husband of ten years and boyfriend of 30 years died last year. Although they dated for that long, and he too suffered from commitment phobia, she decided to continue to see him.

“I always thought I'd have the house, the front yard, the kids," she said, but life dealt her a different deck. What will I do if I don't find Mr. Right? Will I not feel worthy of someone else's love? Will I forever be miserable?

I thought of the ADD, and how it might affect the way I view relationships, too. After a while, I worry that coming home to the same person might be boring. I jokingly told the father and stepmother that I didn't want a husband, but several lovers.

Last night after swimming, I returned home and once again broke all commandments: turned on the computer, ate some licorice and chocolate, flipped through magazines, and went to sleep at 1 a.m. At 5 a.m. I awoke, watching the sky turn from opal to blue. I got up and headed to the pool, having decided that instead of forcing sleep, I would swim.

One of the few things that made my day was meeting an anorexic man in the lane. He used to weigh 180, and then started running like 14 miles a day and shed a third of his weight. He said he realized it got out of control.

I watched as he buzzed back and forth in the lane, obsessive about the stopwatch and the laps. It seemed like an illness. I thought, all he needs to do is stop. It was so fixable and yet not.

It made me feel better that his fitness obsession might be his albatross. Of course, I'd much rather be stricken with a disorder where I eat super healthy and can't stop working out.