“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 mapped 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 ADHD 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-ADHD 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.
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