Adult ADHD Blog

Archives: May 2008

A Summer Romance

Juggling men and unraveling the roots of ADD...

Last night, ahhh, romance hit. A meal of buffalo mozzarella, fresh tomato, calamari, Limóncello, espresso, a dessert of Tiramisu, and, for the first time, a taste of Bellini and a bird's-eye view of Grand Central at rush hour. This is the life. I sat there on the third date with the Ivy League guy… much older, dapper, knows the definition of seersucker. I feel like an idiot half the time because the new man actually knows the history of the Campbell apartments in Grand Central, and knows how to pronounce espresso properly, and what a quirky sense of humor he has, too.

We both enjoy snacking on foods, rather than having entire meals, so in many ways we are perfect for each other. We are official grazers, and the new man jokes, "Us and the director Brian Grazer." I burst into laughter and spit up the water that I had been drinking. It’s funny how I feel so much better dealing with men, so much more confident after the pseudo-boyfriend experience. Every man so far has been a breeze compared to the mystery man. I've been trained to deal with someone very difficult, so in many ways this is wonderful.

I still fear getting close to people, but I also feel a lot more trusting. I don't mind holding hands or letting someone kiss me. Three years ago, I would have turned my cheek and shoulder the other way, fearing that others would see the real me. Three years later, I was sitting at the balustrade at Grand Central enjoying Pinot Grigio and calamari. Life doesn't get better than this. Not bad, I thought.

At the same time, I've been trying hard to unravel the roots of ADD. I'm all signed up to be a guinea pig in a new study at the same hospital where the first guinea pig group met. I'm supposed to take an IQ test, probably piece together some puzzles again, and some researcher will sit there, scrawling notes on why ADD adults can't piece together puzzles. Well I've never been good at Scrabble or Tetris.

I'm not sure why I agreed to participate in another study again, only to think that in reaching out and participating, I have hope that someday I will find the answers. Since the pseudo boyfriend left for overseas, I've been on a search for answers.

I'm all set to meet with the new shrink lady again this Friday, but somehow I wonder how much she understands ADD. She seemed quizzical a week ago when I was 10 minutes late. (Gee, why would a woman with ADD be late?) She asked me if we should keep this appointment time given that I seemed like such a busy lady, that I seemed all over the board.

Lately, it's been a bit like that with the dating escapades, too. I'm juggling three men at the same time. It's insane, perhaps a very ADD way to date, but heck, for now it works.

Babbling

In many ways I feel like having ADD is like being a child-adult; my tendency and the temptation is to sit in a sandbox and make mud pies.

The family vacation in lobster and clam land went okay. The father, stepmother, the sister and I drove off to Newport, Rhode Island on Saturday morning.

I had suggested the getaway, and the sister ended up doing most of the legwork and the planning. She had compiled a list of places to go and things to do, and I get the feeling that she resents that I am the undisciplined, unorganized participant who merely suggests the idea. We have a love-hate relationship, each one seemingly wanting to prove that our problems are more serious than the other’s. She's the one with the physical problems, but I am the one with the mental disorder.

Sunday morning, before I'd taken the fix of Adderall and Lexapro, I woke up my zany self. My conversation was such a patchwork quilt that she looked at me and burst into laughter. I yawned like a lazy cat under the sun and began babbling off ideas and musings. Here are a few silly examples. "How do we know that men are insane? Mental disorder, MENtal, get it?" Haha. I lay on the bed spreading my limbs out on the mattress like a leaf on the water. I felt five years old again and wonderful. "Do you act like this is front of everybody?" the sister asked. "Yes, no, maybe," I giggled.

In many ways I feel like having ADD is like being a child-adult; my tendency and the temptation is to sit in a sandbox and make mud pies rather than change diapers and pay the bills. I will come up with sudden romantic and offbeat ideas.

Like Saturday night, I thought of raiding the vending machine and planting potato chips, chocolates and other vending-machine cuisine before the father and stepmother's door. I wanted it to be a surprise, but after the thrill of the idea there was no follow through. It fizzled like a lot of other things.

It also bothers me that the father and stepmother haven't acknowledged my disorder, treating me as if I were some "character" rather than someone intelligent who is suffering from something. Rather, the sister gets much of the attention with her physical health issues. Now I must sound like a major brat.

The wonderful and terrible thing is that I am resilient, and I have not given up on the belief that I will turn my life's lemons into lemonade. Before leaving for Newport, I called one of the leaders of the guinea pig group again and asked her about this 12-week ADD group that would start in the fall. The group focuses on practical ways to tackle everyday challenges, and I want to get better. I am gung-ho about it, but now the only thing is follow through.

Monday came and it was back to the city again, back to reality.

Liar, Pants on Fire

Did my shrink say she was an expert in ADD? If so, why was she being so callous?

It's discouraging. It's ugly. Lately I've encountered a litany of married men who reek of cheating.

I had lunch with one of them today, a big fat bear of a man with funky purple rimmed glasses, who is on his third wife, and who basically told me his entire love history over really bad Chinese food.

I met him at an Asian food seminar—one of the many, many events that I've been packing my life with to squelch the silence—where he was observant of me in the most slimy way. He had noticed I was on a date with another man, but said that it might have been fate that we both sat in the same row.

I don't know why I accepted the invite to have lunch with him. It was a free meal, but a meal that came with a heavy price. I felt as if he were verbally molesting me as I scanned the menu. Was I single; when I dined out, whom did I dine with—other men? No, my mother, I wanted to say, with a roll of the eyes. He asked me how old I was. I said I was a rabbit; I don't go by age but rather by zodiac. (Let him figure it out.)

I kept thinking to myself: Here I am, eating some version of Shanghainese fried chicken and beef, and this man is hitting on me. He's married to someone out there, and if I were that woman, I'd be pissed. Really pissed. The conversation fizzled after I asked about his wife and his boys, who are basically around my age. I definitely have a way with men and attract them like Tom to Jerry.

This morning, I once again slept through the alarm, but no wonder. Last night, around midnight, I found myself manically doing things that most normal people would do methodically. I washed a pile of dirty dishes, moved Marilyn into his new home (after a month of living in a Ziploc container). I'd finally purchased a real fish bowl at the Petco, and noshed on chocolate wafers at the same time. Marilyn hasn't been the same since the accidental tsunami. It's been sinking to the bottom in submarine fashion. "Maybe it's depressed. Betta fish get depressed, too," the girl at the Petco suggested.

Then, I realized that once again, I'd be late going to the therapy session. I have a new shrink and already she has a sense that I am a serially late person. I ended up jumping into a taxi (and paying the $13 penalty), and huffing and puffing my way into her office, looking like a mad woman.

“Are you sure this time is good for you?" she asked. "Because you seem like you're all over the board."

I felt a lava-like anger erupt. Did this shrink say that she was an expert in ADD? If so, why was she being so callous? I turned the conversation to men, transforming what was to be a useful hands-on session about how to organize a job search into a Sex and the City episode about why I was attracted to bad boys and unavailable men.

The shrink said that I needed to cultivate a jerk radar, culling out the men who weren't meant for me early on. I told her that I longed for a man who was more attentive, more obvious, and more communicative. I wondered if maybe it was the ADD again. It seems like I need everything clear-cut, and I added I don't trust people's actions and body language.

Most importantly, I need to trust myself more, she suggested. "Why do you always think it's you that did something wrong?" she asked me.

Wasn't it obvious? I wondered.

A Fine for Forgetfulness

After losing the prescription, I sulked in the waiting room and thought about life before the assembly line of shrinks and different meds.

It’s official. I lost the little slip of paper with the prescription for the Adderall. I started the day by speed-dialing the Buddhaman’s secretary. The last time this happened, they called and refilled it, but the bad news now was that I was going to have to walk in and give him a co-pay simply for writing it out again in his chicken scratch and scrawl. Blech.

I felt like I was being fined for my forgetfulness. I sulked in the waiting room for what seemed like eternity. I tried to recall what life was like before the prescriptions, before the assembly line of shrinks and different meds. Finally, a tall, big-busted blonde walked out and the Buddhaman motioned me to come in.

“How did you lose it?” he asked, as he sifted through the row of manila folders. I felt a sudden surge of anger as if he were crucifying me for my disorder. I already felt bad enough.

“Don’t a lot of your patients lose things all the time?” I asked sarcastically.

“They lose a lot of things, but none of them have lost the prescription,” he said.

“Oh well,” I said angrily. “It happens to the best of us.”

I get the feeling that he thinks I’m not taking the meds. He scrawled out the prescription again, and I snatched it from him. He asked me how things were going with the replacement shrink.

The nice shrink with warm eyes left three weeks ago, passing on my troubled history to a complete stranger. The fact that they harped me for the co-pay and shuffled me in and out of the office made me feel all the worse. I was truthful and said that the woman didn’t exactly jive with me. I needed someone who told me things like they were, kind of like him.

The Buddhaman replied that I made others anxious with my anxiety, that I reeked of insecurity and anger—in the same way some people stank of body odor or bad breath. He’s always been the messenger for bad news, which most people avoid. He laughed a little. “I’d give her a chance,” he said. “It will take some time to get to know you; you’re a complex person.” “Complex,” a code word for pain in the ass.

It got me thinking to the short-lived relationships that I’ve had in my life, especially the last one. Was the unraveling of the relationship my anger, impulsiveness, and the ADD? If so, then I might as well give up on the idea of a relationship, I thought.

I smiled, shook his hand, thanked him for his wisdoms (eye rolling here) and made a beeline straight for the pharmacy. I clung onto the prescription as if it were a lifeline. No way in hell was I going to let go.

Rebounding and Rebounding

What hurt most was how I had tried to explain that something was wrong. The behavior therapy, the drugs, the beginnings but no ends. Only like everything else, he wants to avoid the issue.

Maybe it gets worse before it gets better. I am hoping it will work that way. It’s like the stock market or Newton’s law: Everything that goes down must come up again.

On Sunday, I hauled myself out to the ocean in Brooklyn, supposedly achieving Friend of the Year by witnessing a friend do a six-hour qualifying swim for The English Channel. As usual, going somewhere involves a lot of panic, doubt, and the feeling that I will inevitably arrive at the wrong destination.

Even though I’d hopstopped the location, when I arrived I realized that I had failed to ask the friend where along the boardwalk I was going to find him. I ended up sweating bullets and walking around blindly, asking strangers for directions. I must have looked so anxious and lost, because they stopped to try to help. I hate the feeling of sheer panic that I get, the feeling that I’m running late, late, late. Everyone had a Russian accent and I might as well have been in a foreign country.

Eventually I spotted the friend and his backpack. He had swum for an hour, before deciding that 55 degrees was too cold. He seemed so calm and collected, and not very upset that I was so late. Once again, I became a bit impulsive and started to pout, as I saw that he simply wasn’t very gentlemanly. I pitted him against the ex guy friend, who I haven’t heard from in two weeks now. Please someone out there tell me that it wasn’t me or my ADD that drove this guy away.

Yesterday I came up with the brilliant idea of creating a “break up” kit, which would consist of a mini piece-it-together cemetery with a RIP tombstone. My mind started to churn, and I began thinking this would be a hit at Tarjay.

Perhaps what hurt most about the last day we had together was how I tried in my own way to tell him that something was wrong. I said that I was a guinea pig of sorts, taking a litany of drugs. I said that I was great at beginnings, ideas, and middles—but almost never executed anything. He changed the topic swiftly to how wonderful the $20 cocktail was (which, by the way, I paid for), as if pulling a rug from under me.

I told him that I felt numb when the betta fish slipped out of the bowl. He asked me if I’d talked with my sister about this, and then kissed me on the cheek. What mixed signals. He knows there’s something wrong—only like everything else in our non-relationship, he wants to avoid the issue.

Back to my friend on the beach: This is the 40th time we’ve gone out together for a swim and breakfast, but I believe he sees me merely as a friend. Disappointing (once again), but not the end of the day. We had brunch at a little café down at the seaport, where I expressed my fears with regards to the nearly 5-mile swim that I will soon tackle. It got me thinking about the other swims in the summer. “Why don’t you focus on this one first,” he suggested. It must drive the non-ADD population, especially men, crazy. “You’re right,” I said. As usual, it always seemed so logical coming from someone else.

On a whole other note, I once again lost the prescription of Adderall from the Buddha man and called the office in another panic. The Buddha man's assistant seemed very understanding, but she said that I'd need to go to the office to pick it up again and bring another co-pay. Once again, a penalty for forgetting and losing.

You Call This Summer?

The stepmom is convinced I need to find a solid, dependable partner—the opposite of me.

Is there such thing as having too much man? In the manic way that I search for everything else in my life, I've been dating a flurry of men.

There's a dozen on the A list, a dozen more on the shit list. It sucks. I long for stability—a sense of peace—and yet it doesn't even jive with the ADD self. I am driven to crisis, insanity, anything that keeps the blood pumping. Give me a stable, sane man with a stable, sane job, and I'd be on a yawning marathon. I'm like Teflon; nothing sticks for long.

The sister has another albatross around her neck. She's had two kidney transplants and has been a cocktail of medications since she was five. Lately she's been having health flare ups. Her hips are misaligned from the meds, but she can't take too many pain killers because of the transplants. She's been in a depressive state, a pendulum between laughing and crying. I mean, what is the greater or lesser of these two evils? I have the same questions about ADD. There is no cure for this. It really hasn't gotten any better.

At times though, I can see signs of what seem like disorder in others. For example, with the ex lover, he compartmentalizes his life to the point where he won't answer the phone when he's focused on something. Is he ADD or way too rigid and selfish?

Then there's the date I went out with yesterday. The guy is always texting last minute and saying he will be late. Is he just lazy, being a jerk or is he ADD? I wonder about these things a lot. By the time he arrived, 30 minutes late, I wanted to walk off and say, "Have a nice dinner." It's ironic that it irks me when people are late because I am the same, if not worse. But since the guy was somewhat cute, I bit my lip and waited for him, waited and waited, fighting impulsiveness. I will not yell, I will not tell somebody off, I kept repeating.

The guy seemed very ADD, too. During the meal, he was chatting on the Treo, scrolling through it, repeatedly saying he felt like he was on speed. Cute, good career, Ivy League, but high maintenance. Too much like me.

The stepmother is convinced that I need to find a solid-as-a-rock fellow, one of those guys who stays at a job for his entire life, a family man with a lot of patience and who drives the same brand of car for his whole life. I need to find an arch opposite; otherwise, it won't work.

At the back of my head, I keep thinking I should look for the most high-flying ADDer out there and hook up with him. Richard Branson, he is married?

The noble and positive thing to do is to tackle the lemons in life and turn them into lemonade, but most of the time it's short lived. Like all else.

I Give Up

After swallowing the ADD meds, I had new thoughts, new plans—but no means to start the engine.

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.

Survivors

If ADD were a gift, we'd publicize it — and not feel strait jacketed by everything conventional.

It's getting worse. I feel like the betta fish that is sinking to the bottom of the flower vase. Is it depressed? In my case, is it Meds gone awry? Maybe it's like LSD, a good trip gone bad.

Lately, I have been living like a wild child. When I was little, I loved watching Peter Pan and had a penchant for the lost boys, parent-less children who live by assumptions.

Last night, I went on a lukewarm date with a middle-aged Chinese tech guy. He was suffering from a bad case of allergies. His eyes were blood-shot, his nose was running, and he looked like he was crying the whole time. He didn't talk much, another shy guy or social dummy.

When I got back from the blahhh date, I broke two commandments. I turned on the computer, got sucked into surfing, and I headed to the fridge to get a fix of whip creme and cake. It's a good thing I went swimming, but once again I haven't made a real swim workout for two weeks now because I have packed my nights with dates to forget the ex... who thankfully is leaving next week at least for the summer.

I feel like every day is a litany of good intentions and broken promises. Once again the words of a former boss echo in my mind before he pink-slipped me, "You get an A for effort, but it's just not working."

I walk around feeling like I am about to explode. I don't have the patience to stand in line, weave through the crowds in the city. I have increasingly been angry at the morning subway squeeze, tired of the tossed salad of people, baby carriages, bags, and luggage—and thankful (so thankful) that I do not live in India or some overpopulated city where my frustrations would be meaningless.

I told the shrink last week—who, by the way, is passing me to another shrink because she's leaving—that things were better when I didn't know about ADD. My self-confidence was golden, because I could pass on the blame. Lost job: their fault, bad boss. Lost relationship: they're a jerk.

Now, I am left in a gray area wondering always if it's my fault. If ADD were a gift, then we'd publicize it, right? It wouldn't be tagged with disorder. I would be able to live freely without feeling strait jacketed by everything conventional. The struggle is also not visible.

But to everyone else, it's so fixable. The father continues to drill the idea of "daily fun hour" in me, and says, "No more than three things." But there are a million things. Even with food. I'll buy a bag of chips, get bored halfway, stick it in the drawer and discover it weeks later. Stale chips are not appetizing.

At work, I have a mound of "stuff" under the desk. Magazines, clothes, information on events that I wanted to attend but forgot about. I imagine holding a matchbook, lighting the match and setting it on fire. It would get rid of the problem, this albatross around my neck.

I was thinking of coming out of the closet and telling the ex that I am sometimes the way I am because of the Meds, and god knows what else. "Make sure he has a drink or two first," the sister says. Better yet, make sure he doesn't laugh, because then I'd strangle him.

As for Marilyn the betta fish, it has survived the tsunami. The sister calls it the "superfish." "It's a stupid story," I responded. "No, it's not. It's a story of survival," she said. It is a survivor, a little like me.

Serial Dating

I joined three dating sites, but forget the passwords half the time — not to mention the names of the dates themselves.

The dating is spinning out of control. Ever since the ex dumped me, I've joined three dating sites, maniacally clicking through headshots and profiles in the same fashion that I skim through jobs. Half the time, I forget the passwords anyway.

In my mind, I keep thinking I am a job hopper, and now I'll be a serial dater, too. Next, next, next. There are 10 dates now, which I rotate from one to the next in a la carte of the day-fashion.

Yesterday, I ran from work, to subway, to pool, and then jumped out of the chlorine universe around 8 p.m. to meet the next date on the assembly line: a ping-pong-eyed middle-aged man who chased me down in midtown Manhattan with flatteries and his business card two months ago.

He said that he saw me and became infatuated much in the way one falls in love with Brad Pitt or Julia Roberts. Stalker alert. I've been trying to shake him off like lint on the jacket. He's been emailing and calling, and finally, I agreed to dinner. I cheapened my worth and figured that at least it was a free meal. How easily I am bought.

Over sushi at a neighborhood Japanese eatery, he said he was looking for a relationship, someone to get to know. "If I wanted sex, I wouldn't be here because you know I could get it anywhere," he said, as he asked for my hand. "Come on, please, I just want to give you a kiss," he pleaded. I shook my head and turned into an icy cold ironing board.

For conversation, I told him about the broken-hearted friend of mine who can't get over her ex-boyfriend. "Tell her that men come and go like buses," he said. I didn't laugh. I think he's dead serious.

I wolfed down the platter of spicy roll as he went on about how he could just tell I was "the one." He asked me why I was so closed, so unwilling to open myself up. He looked at me as if he were in a trance, and I asked him if he was married and had kids. "I'm divorced and I have kids, but sure, I'd like to have more," he said. The guy was insane. Only the second date, and he wants to marry me and have children.

It got me wondering why I was here. Why wasn't I sitting at home, writing a to-do list, meditating, researching the latest and greatest meds? Why wasn't I taking the ADD more seriously? Why wasn't I trying to get better, so to speak.

I've lost track of the names of the dates, and tried to find a way to organize them in the same way I attempt, with much failure, to organize job contacts or the emails of friends. I've packed the week with a date every night, hoping to suffocate the scraps of free time. I fear that I will call the ex again and ask him if he will pretty please get back together with me.

The other day I rang the wrong Dave, flirting when I first called, when in fact it was another Dave who I barely know. I am shameless and impulsive. Is it the ADD, or is it the 32-year old-woman whose biological clock now feels like a ticking time bomb?

It got me thinking that maybe I should date a fellow ADDer or, better yet, marry one. In a lapse of loneliness, I emailed one of the guys from the guinea pig group, and asked if he wanted to have drinks some time. Finally after a phone tag marathon, we had drinks at a bar.

He's in his late 40s and repeatedly said he was self-conscious because of the bridge work. He asked me if I wanted to get together some time again, just for fun. I knew we'd have a lot to talk about. We'd be able to swap war stories, relate to everything from jobs gone awry to relationships gone astray.

It was very tempting to get together again because misery attracts company, but somehow I kept thinking that two ADD people equals disaster. I had images of piles of dirty dishes, mountains of unwashed clothes, and a flurry of unpaid bills. He called again and again, leaving messages, and the third time, I answered and made up an excuse. I said it's been all too crazy at work. Sorry, I said. Not this week.

On a broader issue, it also got me fretting that maybe I'll never have an intimate relationship, and walk down an aisle. The ADD me gets bored of someone too nice and attainable. I need a human Bunsenburner, someone who can be romantic one minute and cold and aloof the next. In many ways, it's no different than the job situation. I need tough love, which, in the end, doesn't sound very romantic.

Killing Fish

I'd slept like a pig and broken all the self-made resolutions. Why even take the Adderall, I wondered?

I almost killed the betta fish. Blame it on the really long and awful date last weekend with the 35-year-old virgin (or closet gay guy).

We've been having swim and breakfast dates since November, and he hasn't made a single move. There's the polite farewell hug, and he insists on picking up the tab, but I'm starting to feel like I'm driving through a heavy fog.

Should I risk a friendship, and ask him flat out if he likes me? The sister says that, for some reason, I always need things clear-cut, like the black and white cookies. "Maybe it's your ADD," she said. Maybe. I'm not sure if he's a 35-year-old virgin, but given that he's never bothered to hold my hand or even kiss me, I think he's just weird.

We waited on line in front of the museum for almost two hours, in the wind tunnel of Fifth Avenue. The weather has been freaky, bipolar. It's May and it feels like March. Sara, my new wing girl from church, came to wait on line with us, and to meet "the guy." She's all outgoing and chirpy and tried to entertain the guy with her bad jokes and bad dating stories. He laughed hard… maybe he liked her.

Anyway, we waited in the cold, shivering, whining about the weather; an hour passed and then another half an hour. I wanted to go home. I was cold, bored. I wanted to sit before a warm fireplace someplace in Lake Placid, somewhere in the arms of the ex-lover.

This was a popular event at the museum; the city's tres chic crowd had come out to dance and drink inside. It was a good idea, but it was fast fizzling like the thousand other ideas I had. "I'm kind of cold, I'm not sure if I want to go in," the wing girl said. I was so thankful she'd said that. We slipped out of the line and called it a night.

Then yesterday morning, Marilyn the fish didn't move. I tapped the half-drunken can of Diet Coke against the bowl, and before I knew it, there was a clink, a hole in the bowl, and the water and pebbles rushing out like a tsunami—and the fish, nowhere to be found. Shit. It was surreal. Was I dreaming this?

I combed the floor on my knees, searching for Marilyn. After what seemed like an eternity, I lifted the computer and saw it there, barely moving. I grabbed the bowl of grapes from the fridge, threw the grapes out, poured water into the bowl and threw the fish in there. It was dead. I had killed it. But then I saw a fin move and an eye blink. It had come to life again. The resurrection of Marilyn.

I was relieved, but, at the same time, alarmingly aware of how things were starting to spin out of control again. It was 11:15 a.m. I'd slept like a pig and broken all of the resolutions that I'd made. "rink everything I pour." "No Internet after 10 p.m." Why even bother taking the Adderall, I wondered?

After dealing with the fish crisis, I found myself running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I had the marathon of swim lessons starting at noon. I found myself running to the pool, breathless and trying to contain the anxiety as I walked up to student number one and tried to muster a faux smile. I wondered if she knew how harried everything was, how I'd overslept the alarm, almost killed the fish, and how I ran seven blocks to make the lesson. I was four minutes late, but made it nonetheless.

I felt myself wanting to beat myself up again, but decided that life was too short. I'd made it. I’d taught the beginners how to float, and I'd taught a really scared woman how to blow bubbles.

She told me how a lifeguard had playfully pushed her into a pool when she was little, and how she's been traumatized since. "You're doing fine," I said to her. "You're doing great," I said to her after she had gotten into the pool and went under the water on the count of three. In the end, I found myself smiling once again. We were both trying our best.

Winter Blues, Paving the Way for a Spring Funk

I calculated the cost for ADD meds and therapy as $10,000 a year, and felt like I was backed into a corner, suffocating.

The betta fish looks depressed. It's sunk to the bottom of the bowl like a submarine, and spits out its food in cannon ball style. I know how it feels. I sympathize and empathize.

I went to the writing class for the last time yesterday — once again 15 minutes late — and when the group turned to discuss my piece, the same criticisms were there. "It's redundant.” “When I read it, I feel like I have ADD." "It's kind of jumpy." "I don't get it." I want to scream: WHAT DON'T YOU GET!

At the same token, the writing guru turned to me and asked, out of sincere curiosity, if a person knows that they are supposed to be on time, then what prevents them from doing so? I mean, it seems so fixable, right? The mantra for my life so far.

It's a fine question, a million-dollar ADD question. Yes, I have tried different things. I have tried the time log, which was lost under the flurry of paper. I’ve tried the "Do three things a day" system that the father consistently bags over my head. "The theme is three," he says. It seems so obvious, so simple.

And I’ve tried the "Do not turn on the computer after 10 p.m." system. But there I am, after a week of being so good, scanning through the dating sites—with desperation emanating from my pores.

The other day I stopped on the sidewalk, feeling devastated when a thought wiped out another thought. "I'm going to be 33 this year. Shit." …And the career is nowhere close to where I want it to be.

Anyway, I looked back at the writing guru and said that it was my dream to be "normal," to have a normal sense of time, to not be impulsive. I said I’ll never know how much of it is me and how much of it is ADD. It’s a life of trial and error, but I try really hard.

I went on a job interview for the first time the other day. It’s a four-day-a-week gig, lots of freedom, decent pay, but, once again, no health care perks. No exceptions. I calculated that the money for the magic pills and shrinks would come to some $10,000 a year at least, and turned blue again. It felt like I was being backed into a corner, that suffocating feeling when I'm thrust into the subway rush hour mosh pit in the morning.

"It's a shame," I told myself as I walked out of a perfectly wonderful interview and opportunity. But a lot of things were a shame, right.