Adult ADHD Blog

Archives: July 2008

Summer Trough

In the end, those who want it all get nothing. It's not fun and things continue to go south.

The dating situation just gets worse and worse. I think back to being five years old in a toy store and pointing to every toy and piece of candy. What do you want? I want it all. In the end, those who want it all get nothing.

The latest travesty (or tragedy) is that I've gotten attached to the 35-year-old swimmer, with whom at the start I'd been swimming and doing breakfast. Sometime in the last four months, I developed a crush for his elusiveness, his six pack and his green eyes, only to be crushed with the "I only see you as a friend" email. The girlfriends tell me that I only want unavailable men.

The other day I went to talk with the shrink again, and complained bitterly of the Indian Buddhaman. He nods off as I speak, takes out the prescription pad, and just asks, "Do you need more of XYZ?" He doesn't seem to listen when I tell him that things are going south instead of north. In anger, I told him that it must be hard to remember who I am given all of the files that he has. Bastard.

If a pill could solve the problem, I'd be a happy woman, because, as I told the shrink woman, I've had it. In the past several months, I've been blindly dating men who clearly are bad for me. It's like going after the Ben and Jerry's all the time.

Over the weekend, there was the 47-year-old poor artist with rotting teeth and pot-holed skin, who tried to stick his tongue down my throat on date two. Yes, he was colorful and interesting but I had no respect for him. None whatsoever. Then there's the quiet Ph.D. student who asked me to coffee, and when I called to confirm, he said, "Oh, why did you call again?"

My respect for men overall is on the decline; why can't they be more clear, if they say they want to do something, why don't they do it? I do take it personally, but that is me: I just do. And I've lost patience.

Maybe it's the problems with living in a big city, or the stresses involved with it. Maybe I need a break from it all. It's no longer fun.

Psycho What?!

It's the second time someone has asked me if I've considered going to a shrink.

A close friend, who I've been emailing and leaning on for advice on jobs, men, etc., finally emailed back and asked if I've considered psychotherapy.

I think she wanted to suggest it for a while, but one is always afraid of offending friends. In the past, I would have cut her off, like a loose string on a sweater – but, at the age of 32, I can't afford to live in limbo, fear, and uncertainty. I already walk around worried and fearful most of the time.

This is the second time someone has asked me if I've considered going to a shrink in the past two years, not counting the time the emotionally unavailable swimmer guy asked if I might be hypoglycemic. How fast my mood shifted when I didn't get what I wanted immediately, or eat something right away. And the anger rises when someone is nice to me, very nice, too nice; I turn away from it as if I were looking into the sun.

The pattern with men parallels the checkerboard of jobs. I am dating any and every man who asks me, without any thought, without any sense of self. I also crave the CIA covert-type men who seem ambivalent to intimacy. I think I can change them with kindness. Silly and stupid. Now I have another four dates this week.

I wrote a "thank you and yes please suggest the shrink" email to the friend this time around, but what I really wanted to tell her is that I also have ADD.

I'm not sure it matters, and I'm not sure why I'm so scared to tell others. No one knows. I hide it as if it were some ugly scar. What I really fear is that they will laugh, or moreover that the line between my problems and issues won't or ultimately cannot be defined as either fear, anxiety, or ADD.

In a moment of sadness, I walked to the church this morning on the way to work, stepped into the chapel—savoring the silence and the color of the stained glass windows—and prayed that some day my Facebook page will reflect, on the surface at least, the normalcy that others my age seem to have: husband, baby, a mortgage, and a stable job.

I've also been a lapse Catholic since being confirmed, but I wanted to prove, perhaps to myself, that I hadn't given up. After a good cry, I walked out into the bustling city, switched into the flip flops and sunglasses and walked to work, head high, chin up. It's a wonderful facade.

Girls' Night Out

What's wrong with my personality, the impulsivity, the temper? What about all of the good things that I bring to the table?

Last night was girls’ night out: frozen margaritas, guacamole, salsa, and all the color and festivity of a night in the big bad apple. It was also a breaking point of sorts.

There is too much going on, and the plate cracked. There is the job, the swimming, the part-time gigs, the hunt for the perfect man, the city, the fifth-floor walk up, and a lot of hurt feelings and regrets that come with the second breakup in the last five months. The friend listened patiently as I described the second guy – 35 years old, fit, a fellow swimmer, a gentleman – who spent eight months swimming, breakfasting, and movie-going with me, but never made a single move. He grew on me a lot.

She said it sounded like that at one point he liked me, and then along the way discovered that my personality just didn't jive with him, and that we weren't a match. That maybe he thought about this for a long time and decided to cut losses early. I'm sad about it. What's wrong with my personality? So what if I like to snack, that I often get up late, that I am a night owl, that I can be loopy and forget things, that I am always running ten minutes behind? What about all of the good things that I bring to the table?

"You need to find someone who will still be with you in the long haul, thick and thin," my friend says. But this is what always happens. The men look at the wrapping paper – cute 32-year-old woman, fashionable, well educated – and then in several months, they see the tardiness, indecisiveness, the impulsivity, the temper, and they run the other way. It's the ADD, I think—or my fear of intimacy.

Maybe unconsciously, I think I don't deserve someone. "Stop beating your brain up, and drink," my friend said. But I've been walking around with a frown on my face, a confused, quizzical look. The father told me I should make a survey and interview the type of men I like and ask them what they look for in a woman, and if I'm lacking some screws, I need to make some changes.

I wish. I regret. I am sorry that I was late all of those times when I promised someone I would show up. What else can I do? In the adult world, there are few second chances. OK, I am sitting in this hot and steamy kitchen in the fifth-floor walk up feeling sorry for myself, but what else can I do?

I need to move on and focus on the positive things about being my quirky self. If anything, I'm good at being kicked to a corner and getting up again. Call in stubbornness or maybe stupidity.

Unraveling Again

I wish there were a pause button — a way to stop everything — once I've overloaded my plate to the brink of collapse.

I have been a blog slacker lately. I kind of just checked out. There was the trip to tornado land, where I watched swimming with a swim friend, and then, once again, I fell into the trap of overloading my plate to the point where it's on the brink of collapsing or cracking.

Perhaps I've fallen into a mild depression after I was dumped by the guy I've been swimming and breakfasting with since November. Over the months, over oatmeal and waffles, over email flirting, he'd grown on me, like mold. He kept his distance though and never kissed me, and, like a fool, I fell for him and put my heart out there.

A few days ago, he sent me an email and said he only likes me as a friend and nothing more, because he sensed I wanted more. This is the price I pay for putting my emotions out there, for deceiving myself.

I wonder if my ADD got me in trouble this time, because at the start, I didn't pay attention. I was too busy salivating on the older Casanova whom I went skiing with and who has disappeared. I don't even remember the details of the conversation that the swim guy and I had. I wonder if impulsivity and impatience led him to dump my sorry ass.

I'm once again falling into the pattern of beginnings and no ends. I'm white-hot over something, then the novelty fast wears off, and then, when I lose it, I melt into tears.

Over the past few weeks, I've been falling behind on bills, on paperwork; the collection agency has rung me. I was late for two job interviews, making excuses that the trains are stalled. I am always apologizing and feeling like an idiot.

I have been considering asking the psychiatrist to up the dosage on Adderall. Maybe it's worn off; maybe I'm metabolizing it like an SUV on gas. I have a million thoughts a day: I will get a Ph.D., I will go to Italy, I will write a book about pens, I will learn to do water ballet, I will be a designer – and in the end I do nothing.

It's all in my head. I wish there was a pause button and a way to stop this. I would want nothing more than to be at peace, and to be in a place where I no longer have to say "I'm sorry."

Meet My ADD Twin

She's picky and particular—and sees me as her lifeboat. So, how to help her when I can't handle my own messes?

I wonder if my friend Cheryl also has attention deficit disorder. We share a passion for swimming and since we went on our inaugural Thelma and Louise trip together, I’ve discovered that we are like Bobbsey twins. She’s 30 years older than me (“of a different vintage,” she says) and probably 40 pounds heavier, but when I’m with her, I feel like I am looking at my reflection.

The vacation planning process for this all-girls trip was a nightmare. There is nothing that sets me off more than having to surf through the gutters of the Internet, frantically unearthing lost usernames and passwords and drowning in a flurry of credit card numbers… which brings me to the topic of the nonexistent budget and the bills that float about.

In the meantime, Cheryl, like me, is very picky and particular. She wanted an aisle seat at the emergency exit, and all the while, I’m thinking, “I can’t do all this for you when I can’t even handle my own accounts.” The frequent flier mile thing was a nightmare: I had forgotten if I had an account with the airline and, if so, I’d long misplaced the card and the number.

Although she’s of a different vintage, Cheryl too has a low tolerance for technology, instruction manuals, online passwords, and anything that requires too much planning. She looks to me as a lifeboat—but I’m in the doghouse, too. Ahhh, I wanted to pull my hair out. I wanted to outsource this wrenching chore.

Cheryl is mostly an ideas person and a child at heart. Inside the hotel where we stayed, she transformed from the 60-plus year old she is into a six year old. She wanted to go check out the indoor water park really designed for those 12 and under. We went on all of the silly slides together, laughing and giggling, flopping onto those rubber tubes and floating down the lazy river.

By midday, we headed to the arcade where we – the two oldest video gamers – played a lean and mean game of ski ball. The last time I played, I was 12 years old and don’t remember having that much fun. We joked and laughed that it was ski-ball Olympics, as the tickets scrolled out like pasta from the machine.

I joked with Cheryl later that it’s nice to be a child at heart—which is what I am—and she responded, matter-of-factly, “I am, too.”

Our eyes both got as large as saucers as we examined the plastic kitschy prizes for ski ball. The awards included a rubber ducky keychain, but I hadn’t felt so happy and free in a long time. On the bright side, we simply understood each other.

Late Fees and Lost Checks

Among the 1,001 things on my mind, I forgot to pay my credit card bill. The debt collectors were calling, and I was going to snap.

The collection agency called. For an adult with ADD, that god-awful (801) area code stands out like a flash at high noon (my favorite line from The Bell Jar).

Deep down I knew that somehow, just somehow, I had screwed it up. There was a lost check, a credit card payment that hadn’t gone through, and a bill forgotten among the 1,001 things that cartwheel in my mind most of the time. I have been there before, and I was there again.

In a dressing room, as I tried on clothes and bathing suits, I conducted the ultimate feat of multitasking—tugging at a too-tight pair of jeans, worried as hell that my friend waiting outside would lose her patience, and dealing with the collection agency on the phone: customer service Gestapo.

I’ve been through the routine: the litany of white lies that gets me off the finance charge and periodic fee hook. This time, I had missed the bill by a week. I remembered paying it online, but, of course, could no longer remember the credit card number, the checking number, what day I paid, and all the other bits that most people have no trouble recalling. I could feel my patience waning like a rubber band being stretched very thin. I was going to snap.

Anger and frustration rose like water at near boiling point, mostly because it was my fault. I lots track of the days and the impulsive purchases—including the clothes and iced coffees and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that make up the fat of the bill.

My reaction this time was no different than previous times. I got mad at the poor soul on the other end, and did the familiar whine—but I did pay! Do you have my address right (because I’ve moved a dozen times anyway)? I never got the statement; you guys suck, because I did pay and you forgot to send out the payment.

In the meantime, the line should really go, “I’m sorry I messed up, please forgive me and, pretty please, take off the charges.” By the end of the conversation, I had spent a record 45 minutes on the phone in the dressing room and had an angry friend waiting outside.

I feel like I’m living life in a confessional booth. But there are no exceptions or excuses, I know, especially since ADD is invisible and, on the hierarchy of disorders and diseases, seems more humane than hearing voices or cutting one’s wrists.

On a bright note, the charges were taken off. I have nine lives, but still, I feel shitty, like I need to find a way to get my ducks in order. I’ve been there before, and I’ll be there again.