ADHD Dad Blog

Better Late Than Never

Archives: October 2009

Trick or Treat: An ADHD Wake-Up Call

Had I insisted on dragging my family into my ADHD fantasy life only to have it blow up in their faces?

“We are falling down, down to the bottom of a hole in the ground, smoke ‘em if you got ‘em, I’m so scared I can hardly breathe, I may never see my sweetheart again.” -- John Prine, "The Bottomless Lake"

It’s Halloween in Villa Park, Illinois, 1959. I’m ten years old in my homemade Zorro costume. My shadow on the moonlit sidewalk looks just like Guy Williams’ shadow in the TV show. I am Zorro -- “a fox so cunning and free.” My friend David says it’s late; we have to get home with our treats before the teenagers came out to do their Halloween tricks. He’s worried that we’ve gone too far to get home in time with our sacks full of Milky Ways and popcorn balls.

But I’m not paying attention. I’m in my own world as I cross into Elmhurst, and gallop down an unfamiliar street. I am Zorro -- I am invincible...except when I’m faced with three Elmhurst teenagers in leather jackets. They surround me at a street lamp. I am suddenly very vincible. Two of them smoke cigarettes; the guy who picks me up by my cape chews a toothpick. They bounce me around, take my hat, mask, cape, and all my candy and send me scampering back to Villa Park. My shadow on the moonlit sidewalk looks like a scared 10 year-old running home.

But see, I’m always shocked by a change in the weather and by hard reality exploding apart my day-dreamed life.

Just this last September, it seemed to me that we were all doing pretty well, in our house. My 14 year-old ADHD daughter was transitioning out of special ed. Her reading and writing was above grade level and she wowed them with her project presentations in social studies. And at home, not only was her temper pretty much under control, her compassion and sense of humor were re-flowering.

My 21 year-old ADHD son passed his midterms and actually seemed to like his classmates and some of his teachers. My non-ADHD wife was working harder than ever at her education company, as well as with her private clients. She had a great response as a presenter and teacher at The Hawaii Writers Conference. It seemed like maybe she’d be able to pull off the first year of her company being in the black. And one of the teachers working for her sold us his car at a unbelievably great price.

And I, the ADHD dad, had finished a pretty successful tryout run of my solo show in L.A. in the summer, and was back in Honolulu in the middle of shooting and editing a local video job that would give us some extra cash. Despite a hiccup or two due to bouts between me and my ADHD, I was reasonably happy. Plus, the new therapist was working out for the whole family. And we found a way to gate the front door so that our huge dog didn’t bound out into the street terrorizing mail carriers, joggers, and the nice lady tending her papaya tree next door.

I had been the one that sold our family on the dream of living in Hawaii in the first place, and after ten years of struggling with the reality of making your way in paradise, it seemed the sun was shining for us, a light breeze blowing across the calm tropical sea.

But then in October, Margaret’s sister called from Georgia. Their mom was in the hospital. Even though she was out in a couple of days, it jolted us. We saw how far apart we were from family who needed us. My parents on the east coast were even older and my dad was going in for surgery, but we couldn’t afford to keep flying back and forth. But both our families needed us. Then, unrelated to these realities, the Hawaii school system discovered they were out of money, and the upheaval was not good for Margaret’s work or my daughter’s school. Then, the car we bought developed an unsolvable overheating problem. Then, worried that my progress on my video project was suffering, I buckled down on that and missed my therapist appointment twice. And the dog knocked over the gate.

Had things changed that much? Suddenly everything that seemed strong and solid about our life on an island in the middle of the Pacific seemed weak-kneed and wrong-headed. Had I insisted on dragging my family into my ADHD fantasy life only to have it blow up in their faces? Had the Elmhurst teenagers busted through my daydream to give all of us a candy-stealing dose of reality?

In the middle of this spin, Margaret and I sit down. “I think we should move to Georgia,” she says.

Next: Ch-ch-changes...

ADHD K.O.’s Dad

The fight may never end, but ADHD or not, it’s the love we have for each other that gives all of us the reason and power to stay in the ring and prevail.

In late rounds this week, ADHD hit Dad with a surprise roundhouse right to the head, knocking him flat with panic, despair, and a hopelessly dark world-view. Petrified that his therapist will want to put him on anti-depressants again, Dad takes a self-imposed sick-week and hides in bedroom.

Family says Dad took a dive.

“Now he gets to lie around all day, eat cookies, and read books,” family says. “Who’s going to do the laundry, clean the kitchen and change the light bulbs?”

“Not I,” Dad says from under covers, “My head hurts. Leave me alone. I need quiet.”

A couple of days go by. The house is peaceful, not a sound. Dad gets out of bed to get a sandwich and maybe a few more Safeway oatmeal-raisin cookies. The kitchen is empty. The whole house is deserted. Dashing around the place in a growing panic, it hits him that there’s no dishes, no clothes, no furniture, no people. His family, seeing he’s no longer useful, has packed up and moved away.

Okay, my family did not desert me.

But late this week, I did get laid out by that ADHD punch to the head and heart. And a good-sized part of me is convinced that the only reason my family didn’t pack up and leave is because I stayed on my feet and kept up with the household chores, part-time jobs, and all the other people-pleasing behaviors that cover the dark, frustrated fury and self-loathing burning at my rotten core.

My crusty old corner-man in the boxing ring sits me on the stool -- squirts water in my face. “How many times I gotta tell you to keep your head down. No wonder ADHD caught you with that right. Now, he’s got you throwing around wild-ass mixed metaphors. Stay focused, kid. Fight your fight.”

Okay, okay. But see, it’s not that I think that my family is mean and shallow or really treats me like a slave. It’s that I know how difficult it can be to be around me when I get overwhelmed, frantic, and short-tempered. I can barely tolerate myself when ADHD hits me with a wave of burning synapses that gets so huge that I’m sure I’ll tumble over and over, and stay lost in confusion and uncertainty forever. And then, trying to keep from drowning, I lash out -- desperate to grab anything that makes sense -- and say or do something scary or hurtful.

So why on earth would my family stay around for this lunacy?

Before, it was probably because I was a mammoth provider. Today -- not so much. So I become a mammoth homemaker. And in a snap, I turn into my mother -- the 50’s housewife putting aside her desires, her writing -- to take care of her spouse and kids. And you have to be real tough to pull that off.

My corner-man towels me off, shaking his head. “You’re not hard enough for that, kid. I seen some of the toughest ladies in the universe fight that fight and get flattened by a bitter madness that’s meaner than anything you can handle,” he says. “If you can’t stay focused, stay honest -- fight with what you got.”

I tell him I don’t know what I’ve got to fight with. ADHD is dancing around in the ring looking bigger and stronger all the time. He can’t wait to pound me into screaming mush.

My corner-man slaps me. “It’s love, kid. That’s what you got -- a whole family full of it. You fight with that, you can’t lose. Now get out there and show that bum who you are.”

So I do. And the old corner-man is right. The fight may never end, but ADHD or not, it’s the love we have for each other that gives all of us the reason and power to stay in the ring and prevail.

And keep an eye out for that roundhouse right.

ADHD -- Captured on Video!

It’s hard enough banging around through life with an ADHD brain leaving little piles of burnt disasters in your wake without having to watch video evidence of your lame disasters repeating in front of you in digitally corrected color.

So I’m in the middle of this video project that’s like any project any of us do for money -- demanding, nerve-wracking, and, well, hard. I know -- why do you think they call it work? And I know I’m luckier than I deserve to be, that this job fell in my lap in the first place because we need that money yesterday. And I’m not complaining -- I’m more like spinning in front of my computer freaking. And then complaining, but about the freaking -- which doesn’t qualify as an ungrateful, selfish attitude that’ll get me fried by a lightning bolt from God -- so that’s alright... (I started spelling “all right” as one word when I wrote TV. I don’t think other TV writers do it. I think I fell into the one-word spelling from overuse because all my TV characters were so weak-willed and passive that they acquiesced to every other character’s desires continually -- “Alright, whatever you say...only if it’s alright with you...alright, it’s my fault...are you alright?” But I don’t think that it’s really a word unless it’s one of the ones that got in because the dictionary people got tired of trying to make people spell it correctly -- “Alright, we give up already!”)

So, anyway. I’m freaking about the video project, but not because it’s hard and demanding. I do hard and demanding every day. It takes concentrated effort to remember to rinse the conditioner out of my hair before I step out of the shower and start rubbing a towel into the pink goop -- and yeah, I’ve tried 2-in-1 shampoos, but they don’t work on the Alfalfa-like cowlick that sticks up from the back of my head. Okay, okay I’m vain. But I’m a sixty-year-old, ADHD ex-truck-stop cook and TV hack trying to live out my life with dignity, so how about giving me a break, alright?

You know what’s also hard? Remembering to take your afternoon ADHD medication. I’m always forgetting until about three or four p.m. and I’m already an insomniac so I’d like to skip the meds by that time. But if I do, dinnertime will be a mess for the whole family with me forgetting, getting all tense and yelling (the dark side of ADHD Dad) -- if I even remember to make dinner.

Of course, my skipped-meds consequences don’t hold a candle burning at both ends to my to my bi-polar friend’s skipped-meds consequences. Try a four hour phone conversation convincing someone you care about that the only way to keep the black hole behind her bed board from sucking her into oblivion is to get her prescription out of the purse in the hall no matter how impossibly far away the purse or any possibility hope and meaning in life are. “They’re in the purse, alright? Meaning and hope are right under those child-proof caps waiting for you.”

But, okay, about the video project...It’s an exercise video -- real good trainer, a smart, thoughtful woman. It’s not her. It’s me. I direct, light, and shoot the footage. Then, I get home and capture it into the editing program. Now, as the editor who’s got to make the end product out of whatever was shot, I look at the footage and I can’t believe what I see. I forgot to match lighting on consecutive scenes, I forgot insert shots, I didn’t see the huge lighting instrument reflected in the mirror right behind her while she’s talking to camera, and -- look at this! -- a whole scene shot without sound because I forgot to turn on the lavaliere microphone.

It’s hard enough banging around through life with an ADHD brain leaving little piles of burnt disasters in your wake without having to watch video evidence of your lame disasters repeating in front of you in digitally corrected color. But I’ll fix it in editing, somehow. Maybe do a reshoot for that sound glitch. I’m not complaining -- okay, I am -- but the client’s coming over to look at a cut, my hair looks stupid, and I need to take my meds.

Next time, I’ll be more together, alright?

Writing: A Temporary Cure for ADHD

I've realized that crafting honest writing cuts ADHD fear and self-pity off at the knees. Maybe if I write more, I’ll lash out at others less.

Every time I post this blog, I think I’ll get the next one emailed off sooner. It’s one of the enjoyable chores in my life, these days. Besides, I’m a writer and it’s important to keep my honesty and story structure skills working when I’m not, like now, writing a big project like a play or whatever. But maybe the problem is looking at this blog as a chore at all. I know I said “enjoyable,” but put it in front of “chore” -- that’s pretty faint praise.

But these days, my life is pretty much all chores. My wife, Margaret, is working hard out in the world keeping her company, and therefore our family, afloat, so I’m the housekeeper and stay at home parent doing the laundry, dishes, and housekeeping chores. This is a very fair arrangement -- I’ve already testified to my cleaning obsession -- and we’ve found a useful way to harness it. And I’m doing some small-scale video shooting and editing, which I can do out of the home. That brings in a little money. And the kids like me around, when they get home, to talk to and make them stuff to eat. I love the kids and my wife. My wife and kids love me.

Considering what most people are dealing with in their lives, I couldn’t have it better. By all rights, I should be the prime example of a happy, healthy dad and husband. I certainly shouldn’t be yelling “I don’t know! I’m sorry! I’m stupid okay? You know I’m stupid!” at Margaret, and then slamming out of our bedroom at night. But that happens sometimes when you have a mental condition, I guess. But losing my mind two days after I post a mature-sounding blog about dealing with my daughter’s explosive temper is embarrassing.

It was a little thing, really. A text message buzzed on my phone while I was video-editing at the computer. I picked it up thinking it might be my son texting me from school needing something. But it was a message from the bank saying to call immediately due to some “activity” on our account. Now, I don’t do the money in our household -- I’ve already testified to my ineptitude in that area, as well -- but I do know we are perpetually on financial thin ice, so I call the number on the screen.

Long story short -- it was a phishing scam. And I had keyed all our bank account info into it. Later, I mentioned the bank emergency to Margaret, and she was understandably concerned about what I’d done, and I tried to explain but couldn’t because I couldn’t remember how it had happened exactly because I was distracted thinking about something else as I did it, and then couldn’t talk because I was paralyzed by how stupid I’d been to do it, which reminded me of every other unbelievably stupid thing I’d ever done in my long personal history crammed to bursting with countless stupefying mindless mistakes in judgment and lack of common sense. And then, just like my daughter, I lashed out.

Later, after it was all over, and the card was canceled, and our account was safe, Margaret and I talked. “What are you so angry about? And why are you so angry at me?” she asked.

I told her I wasn’t angry at her, but angry at myself, disgusted by myself, really, and tried to explain the lashing out again, but it’s hard for her to understand when she’s the one who’s been recently lashed out at.

I agreed to talk to the shrink about it at the next visit. And I will. And I’ll turn up the vigilance on my temper. But sometimes I’m doing the chores around the house and I feel like my mom, the frustrated writer/housewife in the fifties -- cleaning and criticizing myself for unwritten words and too-clean bathrooms.

And sometimes I don’t see the bright side of ADHD, hypomania, stammering or any of the other brain crap. All I see is the constant, every second struggle to pay attention, remember the word, the name, the appointment, or even find a clean, clear thought. I get tired and want nothing more than to go hide in a book. That helps.

And sometimes, if I’m lucky, when it’s late enough that everyone else in the house is asleep, I’ll turn on the computer and start typing. And usually if I do that, like I’m doing now, I realize that writing this blog is no chore at all. And I once again realize that crafting honest writing cuts fear and self-pity off at the knees. Maybe if I write more, I’ll lash out at others less.

It’s worth a try, anyway.