I'm better, I think. I'm still unmedicated, though there were a couple of weeks where I tried 18 mg of Concerta, per day, sometimes taking 27 mg and once taking 54 mg (all with the permission of my doctor). They sort of helped. I got more frustrated, and little things I couldn't do made me want to cry more. But that could be because I tried harder to do more little things, so when I failed, I got more and more frustrated, or I was becoming aware enough to actually notice my failure in little things instead of brushing them because my arousal level was too low so I couldn't accord it enough attention to think about it long enough for it to occur to me to get upset. Convoluted, I know. I'm too tired to make sense of it right now.

I'm drowning not in my pain, but in frustration of not being able to fight back. I want to move out, and be able to dictate where and when I go to see whomever I choose. I want to be able to tell you all about how I'm sure I have a condition that discourages me from doing things and I want for you to understand that what I want to do, I will do. Most of all, I want you to tolerate that my choice is in fact, my choice and that I'm not doing things just to spite you, but because I actually want to.

I mean, I think that's something that you don't seem to understand the most and so you brush off as stupid or silly. I want to do things. I want to go out and see my friends and talk to them often. I do things just because I want to. I don't see them to worry you or to throw you aside like some piece of trash, expecting that I'm number one on your priority list. All I think about when I go to see my friends is that I want to see them for myself. I want to see them 'cause I enjoy being around them and they make me laugh and think about things I wouldn't otherwise think about. They draw me from my bubble of self-absorption. I want to see them for me, and sometimes for them, but mostly for me.

I don't see them at night after you leave for work because I like to sneak behind your back. I see them then because it's the most convenient, it's time that we all have off.

I go out not because I don't care about you or respect you. I respect you as a person. I don't respect your rules because they don't make sense to me, because they seem solely founded upon you wanting me not to change and grow apart from you. So I ask you to explain it to me, I ask you why. By asking you to explain yourself, I'm challenging your rules, not your authority. I'm not challenging your place as my mother, I'm not saying you're not important to me and so I'll just ignore you anyway. I'm asking you to explain your thinking, to re-evaluate your thinking objectively and be open for discussion. But if you don't offer up any explanation and instead try to incriminate me by asking questions, you're not making your point. You're only further showing your own biases. I'm not going to understand if you don't say it outright.

Even if you don't change your mind, at least think about what I'm saying, why I'm saying things. Don't just brush it off like I don't know anything, because even though I haven't seen anything of the world, I still have my own mind, capable of making decisions for myself. Which also, by the way, means that I make mistakes. And not-mistakes.

I know you think I'm naive, that things aren't that simple. But why can't they be? An example you used to try to convince me I was wrong for saying that I hadn't seen my friend in a long time was, "I have friends I haven't seen in years, does that mean I should go see them?" And my reply was that if you really wanted to, why wouldn't you? If you really wanted to see that person, you could. There's nothing stopping you. And then, you brushed me off as if I was being ridiculous. I stand by my position. It is that simple, that you go see that person. I mean, maybe you have to save money to get plane tickets and shopping money 'cause they're in a different country, but still, you could. You could work to that goal and see them. If you were ready to make that a priority, nothing would stop you, except natural disasters and/or death.

What I get from your example and your reply is that you've never wanted to see anyone that much. Or you've always allowed things to stop you, that you've just stood aside and waited for it to happen because some things you can't control. But you can help things along, mother. You can try and try and try until something changes. Because when one thing changes, everything changes.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that you want me to trust you and to depend on you. But you lash out when I don't and then further alienate me.

I know how confusing it must be for you, but please try to understand: I'm not making you do anything. I'm not holding you at gunpoint or threatening your life. I'm not manipulating you or coercing you with sweet words. I'm simply telling you that I will perform this action. Whatever your reaction may be, whatever course of action you decide to take, know that all of that is your doing. Your choosing. Not mine. So if you do actually drive up to my friend's house and force some kind of maladaptive discussion about how they're stealing me away or whatever nonsense you believe is happening when I leave the house to see her for a couple of hours twice a week, that would be all on you.

And believe me when I say that every time you say things like that in an effort to persuade me into something you want me to do instead of what I want to do, saying you'll do something crazy because of your own insecurities or inability to understand that people have their own lives if I don't follow your carefully outlined character profile for me, I feel even more inclined to leave.

Not Quite, My Dear

Her fingers slide smoothly from chord progressions though sometimes they catch on the edges of keys because she does not lift her fingers high enough. The bright and shiny chords Mozart wrote into the movement are not as bright and shiny as he meant them to be. Her touch on the keyboard is light, but in a tame and weak way, rather than an ornamental bubbly way. She does not bring the best out of the piece as brightly as she should. She does not make it shine.

Her attempts cheapen the Mozart more and more with each try. I do not understand if it is because she is lifeless, or if she sees the music as lifeless. There are moments when I play out phrases and bars to show her when I cannot tell her and she watches, fascinated, enchanted by how beautiful the music can be. Then she plays immediately afterward and it falls flat in comparison. It gets duller and duller until it goes back to tarnished metal, rather than the airy and polished gold it should be.

Even worse, she reads the music and plays wrong notes. She makes elementary mistakes. She does not practice and iron out those kinks. She does not practice.

I do not know what to do with her. She will not pass with her repertoire the way it is, but she or her mother, it does not matter who, insists on playing the exam in August. It is possible to be ready by then, if she practices several hours a day. I will not pretend to believe she will.

(Celebration Series Perspectives Piano Repertoire 10. Royal Conservatory of Music. Canada.)

Edit (an insert at the end of the second last paragraph).

Where there are markings for the use of pedal to draw out every last bit of sweetness and brightness in the left hand, she completely ignores. She cannot seem to read what is not in pencil. She is woefully inept. And she forgets much of what I tell her regarding the musical context as well as the kind of sound she should learn to produce.

I think this is the very first time that I stuck my neck out and made a mistake but didn't hate myself for it. This is good.

This is really, really good.

You are not okay. You are really, really, not okay.
Everything you do is maladaptive. Everything you think is maladaptive.
You are not okay in any way.
The fact that you are so maladaptive makes you completely and totally incredible.
You can't be okay. There's no way at this moment in time you can be okay.

Remember that you are not okay. Remember this moment when you are truly not okay.
Remember that you have been rubbed raw and are left with open wounds, waiting to be scab over or get infected and get more maladaptive. Remember this moment and remember that even though you are not okay right now and you will probably not be okay later or tomorrow, there will be some day that you are okay.
It is a long and grueling road and I know it is so goddamn hard. Maybe it doesn't look hard, maybe it's not supposed to be hard maybe you have no "right" to have this difficulty with doing things. That does not change the fact that it is hard.
Maybe it's not what you think, maybe what everyone is saying is more on the mark. Maybe you don't have what you wish you did and you can't explain why.

Just please, please remember this moment and remember that you are hurt and vulnerable and prone to infection. You need to start with fresh cells, rebuild your skin one replication at a time (this metaphor doesn't really work). But either way. It will take time; remember that you feel this and trust in yourself. Not in the gimmicky "believe in yourself and you'll be able to do it" but in a way where you believe in what you've felt and what you've seen.

You have felt this pain and this difficulty and if no one else supports you in your "delusions" then you will have to. So do so. And just remember you have reason to.

So what is this? You start crying and sobbing and talking incoherently for what? Something you can't even seem to back up? You can't even talk about it, you have no idea what's going on and you're trying to say that I don't trust you? Look at yourself. You're using tactics like breaking down into tears and you're steadily taking larger and larger breaths. Are you trying to elicit sympathy? Is this where you try to hyperventilate on purpose to prove your point? 'cause it's not working. The only thing you're making clear is that you're not capable of taking care of yourself because you don't have any clue what's going on with yourself, let alone here in this situation and all you can think to do to solve that issue is through gimmicky reactions like questioning my trust in you. How can I possibly trust you when you can't even handle talking about something you brought up yourself? You're incapable.

So just shut up, suck it up and deal with this so-called difficulty of yours because like you said. Tons of people deal with it without ever getting diagnosed. Why would you need help then?

ADHD kicking my ass today, more so than yesterday.

I wanted to make note of today in case sometime down the road (it'll come, I know it) I get complacent with knowing I have ADHD and stop perceiving that I have ADHD. I mean, I've learned that I have it and I got a diagnosis and I was all Si satisfied that I can shut people up and be like, "Yeah, I got an official diagnosis, yo, with a doctor and everything, so screw you," and get meds legitimately and stuff. And then I promptly forgot what getting tested for it was even about.

I mean, it's okay, it happens. You get so wrapped up in the joy of actually getting what you want that you forget why you even wanted it in the first place. Or like, you're so busy being smug about being right that you forget what you're even right about and if it even matters (being right, that is). In my case, I wanted this diagnosis so I can get meds, so I can improve on tasks and things, like self-regulation and doing stuff and maybe complaining about it ('cause I complain about things I don't even care about doing) but not actually complaining for real or not doing stuff on purpose (more like being aware that you're not doing stuff and you can't bridge the canyon between what you think you should do and actually doing it).

Today, I got a reminder. Or I realized something. I was doing laundry for the first time in forever, not because I never wear clean clothes but because I leave that for my mother to do in practice for my future years as her basement tennant and I completely flipped a shit.

Okay, what happened was:
1) I got confused by the knobs on the washing machine because they had no "normal" setting. They had three general setting which each had their own settings, which confused and blatted me, so..

2) ..I called my mother who also got frustrated at my blindness and by inability to read. I still couldn't find the normal setting, so I settled (haha, see what I did there?) on the heavy-duty regular setting because I had all thick sweaters and jeans and stuff anyway so whatever.

3) I was stuffing all the clothes in the machine and felt that there was some space left, so I made the split-second decision to wash my scarf. I looked for the tag with the washing instructions on my scarf and after two minutes finally found it, only to get confused at them. (I don't even know why I bothered to look for them, I can't make sense of the symbols on any tag on any piece of clothing.) In the end, I just stuffed it into the machine as well and dumped detergent in there.

4) After the cycle ended and started refilling with water, which I was told/remembered that that was when I'm supposed to add fabric softener, so I opened the lid only to discover my white scarf and splotches of blue on it. I felt it and was surprised at how cold the water was. (I'm a chore noob. I've been spoiled. Sue me.) Anyway, not to worry, it was just detergent. And then I screamed in my head, "Just detergent?!?! Fuuuuuuuuuuuucccckkk." So I took the scarf out and plopped it into the plastic bucket that was conveniently placed beside the machine and hoped that some of the detergent had been successfully dissolved during the cycle.

5) I took the bucket to the sink and started filling it with water and realized that when the machine was filling up, with cold water, the rest of the house only had hot water. I waited, filled the bucket halfway, and started massaging(?) the scarf, generally hand-washing it, I guess? I got fed up with the bucket and tried to rinse it in the sink. Took a bit of time, but that was okay. I hung on the upstairs balcony to dry.

6) When the fabric softening cycle ended, I dumped most of the clothes in a basket to bring to the basement to hang on this skeletal contraption for air-drying purposes and actually got there when I heard the telephone ringing, so I raced upstairs and picked up the phone, only to just miss the call. No problem. I could just call them back, right? I dial the kitchen phone, 'cause it has call display, but then noticed that I couldn't use the display and dial at the same time, so I tried to recite the number out loud in the hopes that it'd work. I tried dialling, and then I forgot. I looked at the display again and I forgot again.

That was when I swore and cussed out the caller. I got so frustrated as to actually let out a scream of frustration and anger and slammed my hands against the coach in some attempt to move it, I think? I managed only to hurt my wrists due to the quickness of my action and marched back to the basement, which was when I realized that I was having a tantrum.

I was having a tantrum! I hadn't felt this in such a long time because I hadn't tried to do things in such a long time. The only other instances I can remember having tantrums is trying to practice piano. I felt the burn of tears and the back of my eyes and continued hanging my clothes.

Now that I've had time to cool off and work it out, I've come to the conclusion that I really do in fact need meds. I got all complacent because I can survive without them, it's true. But the fact that I couldn't find the knob I wanted and so got blatted? Also when I couldn't handle the missed phone call which by the way I still haven't called back? And what about the call I got earlier which I did answer but got confused and so completely shut down and became completely unhelpful (half due to my actual unhelpfulness in answering the person's questions and half because I realized how unhelpful I was being and panicked and so, couldn't even offer alternative options)?

Clearly, I need something to help me weather through things so I don't get weirdly warped and guilty because I can't perform the simplest tasks.

Headache

I don't want a pat on the back or anything (and I can guarantee no one, including me if I wasn't writing this myself, would offer me one) because I don't deserve one nor is it really helpful in any way. I just want to vent.

Now that that's out of the way, I just did one of the hardest things I've had to do in a really long time. It's not a particularly difficult task. In fact it's a lot watered down compared to what I expected it to be, but the point is that it was hard and I've already said that three times.

Writing a resume is really hard for me. I don't have a handle on why right now but it's just hard. I think it's because I can't be honest. No matter what I write on a resume, it always feels like I'm lying. I mean, I'm pretty maladaptive and when faced with having to write out a list of my own achievements, I feel like crying because I don't have any. Now other people would say that that's not true, I've got all these awards(that don't mean jack) and I'm good at writing (in what way and how would you know anyway?!) and I'm such a good and talented person with tons of potential.

(Who is this person you're talking about? I don't see her anywhere. I can't reconcile your idea of me with my idea of me because your idea's too simplistic and you don't bother to dig deeper and my idea's too extreme and negative because I don't trust myself and so create a self-fulfilling prophecy thing where I fail at life.)

I guess another reason I hate writing resumes is that everything that goes on there, my educational background, my awards, my interests--they don't matter. None of it matters. I could be President of the Recycling Club and still be a nasty person. I could have joined all the right clubs and have all the right references and I'd still hate myself. It doesn't matter. I always think that it doesn't matter because I'd still be under-qualified. It'll never be enough. I'll never be enough.

And so there it is, the real reason I hate writing resumes and performing all these rituals that won't necessarily help my case. I feel like I will never get the job or deserve the job whether I get it or not. I feel like these things are too awesome and too all-encompassing, too enriching. I could never be worthy of them, I wouldn't learn as much from them as another person would, I would take them for granted, I'd waste such great opportunities. I don't deserve your consideration, anyone's consideration. I'm pathetic.

And I'm not even putting on a front to gain sympathy. Maybe it started out that way as a child, you know, you see people fake modesty and successfully fish for compliments and stuff. But this hasn't been fake modesty since childhood. I truly believe this.

But I still did this. I'm still doing this. I still doing all these things that are so, so hard for me. I wrote a resume, a functional resume, but still a resume. If I did it two days ago or even yesterday, I'd be like, whatever, but I wrote it today. I forced myself to open a document and open the site and follow the template and spent time on it. I wouldn't let myself get on skype until I did because it would a)have been an escape, and b)I'd be told by these wonderful friends of mine who wouldn't take my bullshit for an answer to do it anyway. And I totally could've just done a) and have it progress to b) only to prove myself right about my not deserving them because I would disappoint them by not even trying. But I didn't even let it get that far.

And even though technically, they were still most of the reason I did this in the first place, I eventually got through on my own.

And that's why I feel like crying.

Oh yeah. Well, I've decided to share in the joy that is salvation. Seriously, I felt like someone who's found God must have felt, at least some fraction of it. I felt healed or on the process of healing, loved, warm and of that mushy crap "tough cynics" like me shy away from because talking about it sincerely makes us uncomfortable.

ADHD.

That's right. That's why I kept feeling like I was burning out or digging myself deeper and deeper into holes even though I never touched drugs, and I am the posterchild for anti-underage drinking and I never skip class, etc. etc. That's why I decided to go into English instead of trying my luck at a more competitive program, though it wouldn't actually be luck. I knew I wouldn't be able to do it. I thought it was lack of commitment. I thought I was just a failure as a person, a soulless drone who couldn't find a lick of motivation anywhere she looked.

Nope, it was ADHD.

Yeah, I know, all you skeptics out there. How does that solve everything? Well, it doesn't. It's just an explanation and it makes A LOT of sense. It really does.

Anyway. If I have ADHD, and I'm almost certain I do, then I will have a plan of action to get my life together and live blissfully in this world of rainbows and unicorns and happy-go-lucky pig-tailed children skipping on brick roads. No, of course that's not what'll happen. If it ever rained, there'd be broken children littering the streets and the volunteers who clear the highways and stuff would never get their job done.

No, our urban planners have more foresight than that, I think.

http://helpguide.org/mental/adhd_add_adult_symptoms.htm