It’s now the small hours of the morning of what will be the shortest day of the year.
The quiet time of the long dark is when I renew myself.
Solstice is the peak of my season and I will celebrate this day.
Definition
Codependency: A horse put together by a committee from two different sets of pieces, resulting in a camel with no legs.
Just think about the potential accumulation of camel crap.
There’s a reason I refuse to go there.
A Little Slapstick
I don’t sleep late on the weekends anymore, at least not often. The older I get the harder I find it to force myself to try to live in violation of my body’s natural rhythms. Those are not of the early bird persuasion, so giving in just makes it that much harder to come back.
On Saturday I got up about the usual time, came downstairs and started on the coffee and breakfast routine. Because I am a slow starter I’d already been at it for awhile when my husband appeared.
As he headed for the coffee pot, I decided it was about time for my third cup. Since I am a creature of habit, I knew where I was in the routine. At least I thought I did.
I picked up my cup and, just for fun, decided to have a good stretch.
And dumped half a cup of lukewarm coffee on my own head.
We laughed even longer than it took to clean up the mess.
Child of the Cold War
I was born in 1956 and grew up near the port city of Philadelphia.
I had the good fortune to attend public schools where there was none of that nonsense about hiding under desks. We were taught what a first strike zone was, that we were in one, and what that meant. We were also taught to how to exercise a little dignity in preparation for the day when it would be needed.
What we weren’t taught was how to deal with a world in which the Cold War was over.
When it did end, I remember having a hard time visualizing a world in which I might live a full span of years. I also remember deciding that it was probably pointless to try to do so as something else was likely to come along which would foreshorten the time.
There were times when I would begin to wonder about that foreshortening, but then someone would come along and blow up part of New York and I’d slide back into my comfort zone.
Now, at 51, I’m no so sure.
I’ve reached an age I’m already not supposed to have lived to be, according to that early life script. I’m finding it quite uncomfortable.
Since My Father Died
I’ve lost 15 excess pounds. I’ve gone off anti-depressants. I seem to have quit engaging in “shopping therapy.” I’ve gone back to cooking on a fairly regular basis. I’ve started taking lovely care of my fingernails, even though that means seeing someone every two weeks for professional treatments.
Funny how these things work.
Free at Last, Free at Last
This morning I got up and grabbed the cell phone to clip on my hip as usual. Then I realized that it was not, technically, required this morning. I smiled, because it reminded me that, this morning, two people were free. My father died in the small hours yesterday morning. If there’s any mercy in this universe, he is free of the demons which plagued him all his life. I’m now free to remember the times they didn’t stand between us.
On Bristol Road
Neshaminy Warwick Presbyterian Church is one of those old pre-Revolutionary ones in Bucks County, Pa. It’s located at a curve on the Neshaminy Creek. Bristol Road, the one that goes by the church, takes a sharp turning as it goes over the bridge which crosses the creek. Various attempts have been made over the years to straighten and widen things a little bit, but although the bridge has been re-built for safety reasons its location hasn’t been changed, in part for historic reasons, but mostly because of the odd turning of the creek.
As the story goes, once upon a time, a long time ago, a young woman in a white dress was killed at night on the bridge. There may or may not have been a mist rising from the creek at the time, depending on the teller. She was either riding in a carriage which tried to take the turn too quickly and flipped, crushing her between the carriage and the bridge, or she was waiting on the bridge for a rendezvous with her lover and was hit by a carriage which didn’t see her. After a couple of hundred years, the story has gotten a little blurry. In any event, on certain dark nights, it is said that she can be seen on the bridge and her appearance has been blamed for more than a few close encounters between sides of the bridge and vehicles, even during my early lifetime.
Personally, I always figured it was a matter of careless driving or speeding and didn’t give much credence to it. That was before the time I was up there visiting my parents and had occasion to travel by the church one dark night–and damned near hit the bridge when I saw her.
A Day in the Life of My ADD
Author’s note: The caps, exclamation points, italics and bold are an indication of the volume of my own voice screaming inside my head.
Here’s how it went:
I read an excellent and informative paragraph on DEA classifications of ADD meds (posted on a message board) which concluded with, “When taken orally at the prescribed dosages, these drugs have great medical value and rarely produce any sort of high. But make no mistake, they are narcotics, and do carry the risks thereof.” Because I was not able to successfully process that information, my brain focused on the word “narcotics.”
I got all excited, looked up the word “narcotic” to confirm what I thought I knew, and got agitated because the ADD drugs are not technically narcotics (which are the opiates, belladonna, heroine, etc.). I got further worked up because I couldn’t understand why, when the author clearly knew so much about these drugs, s/he would make such a mistake. I was completely mystified by this and it was a VERY BIG DEAL! I tried very hard to figure out a way to post to correct this ERROR! [an example of the way my brain processes in extremes and absolutes]
As a result of lessons hard learned, I managed to hold off posting until I’d had a chance to think it through, but holding off was a physical challenge. I kept leaning toward the keyboard and pulling myself back.
About this point, I took my Focalin because that’s where I was in my morning routine and it’s what works for me.
It finally dawned on me that use the of the word “narcotics” was probably shorthand for “drugs, which if misused, have a high potential for addiction.” Having figured that out, I would like to have been able to let it go at that point. What meds do for me is that I am more often able to do so. However, not in this case.
Instead, my brain took off on “But what if someone reads it and DOESN’T UNDERSTAND! What if someone who might be helped by meds doesn’t try them because they get the WRONG IDEA! I have to do something about this!”
At this point, my rational brain kicked in and responded with, “Bullshit. No you don’t. It’s no big deal and you’re probably the only one who had trouble reading the meaning. Besides, you don’t have to be in charge of the whole world.” Again, this should have been the end of it. However, this time, it led to cognitive dissonance so bad that I was rocking in my chair and my hypnotherapy breathing techniques kicked in.
The agitation continued, but I continued to fight the urge to blurt. Even with the meds, I knew I had 50-50 odds of this going on all day. I gave serious consideration to going away from the board for an extended period to avoid dealing with THIS ISSUE which had grown to such vast proportions in my head. Intermingled with all this were terrible feelings of shame and alienation.
Finally, as the meds began to ramp up and I continued to do all my calming things, the physical agitation let go (although my odd interpretations were still niggling at the back of my brain). At that point, I found that I was hungry, thirsty and feeling exhausted, which are symptoms I have observed in dogs post-seizure.
I’m a high-functioning ADD person (and have the test results to prove it) and this is how it happens for me.
90th
Yesterday was my father’s 90th birthday. It’s an interesting landmark for a man who, when he was born, wasn’t supposed to live until morning. Or a man who, when he had a major heart attack at 45, wasn’t supposed to last much into his 60s. Or a man who, when he was in his early 70s and was treated for prostate cancer, was told that there was no possibility that he’d live long enough for it to kill him if it did come back. It hasn’t, but if it does, I’m not taking any bets.
He’s slowed down since Christmas. He’s now at the point where his cognitive processors can’t handle sentences of more than about five words, incoming or outgoing. He’s also a little deaf, at least in the left ear, so conversation is a bit of a challenge. Most of the time, when he comes in from left field, I can figure out where he’s been, but every once in awhile I’m mystified. Then again, that was always the case, as far back as I can remember.
I can’t help but wonder how much better his life might have been if there had been diagnosis and treatment for depression and ADD when he was younger. At least now his depressesion is being treated. I think it’s too late for the other and I doubt, with his heart, if his doctor would be willing to try stimulants in any event.
One thing that hasn’t changed is that when he makes up his mind, it’s not good to confuse him with facts. Back at Christmas, he knew that he was going to be 90 this year. However, since then, something changed. Yesterday he was determined that he was 80 and it was not well received when I said otherwise. You’d think that after all these years, I would have learned.
ADD and Me
I should be somewhere else doing something else but I’m afraid that if I don’t write this down right now, I’ll forget. Again.
I see a neuropsychiatrist for migraine management. This particular practice deals primarily in head trauma and ADD/ADHD, but they’ll work with migraineurs as well and I happened to know a number of the folks there, including one of the doctors, through proximity in my former office complex, so they see me.
Dr. G. develops his own testing models and then rigorously tests them for veracity by having his staff and some-well known patients take those tests. Since they know me in a casual social context as well as knowing me as a patient, I got to take lots of tests. I hated them, but I was willing to help out.
A little less than a year ago, I finally asked for official testing and diagnosis for ADD. I suspect they’d been waiting for me to ask for some time. I took the test and I did quite well, but I was an anxious wreck for the rest of the day. A few days later, I took the drug and took the test again and the difference in the results was amazing. So was the lack of anxiety about it.
I asked about whether the difference was simply that I’d become familar with the test. They reminded me that I’d taken variations on that test many times before and was already familiar with it. They also pointed out the difference not only in the scores but in my response.
I tried the first drug. It had side effects which were not good. I tried the second drug. It was worse. I decided it wasn’t really that bad and I could keep on coping as I’d done all those years.
Since sometime in 2003, I’d been riding the drama-llama rollercoaster, with events over which I had no control (other folks’ disease and death–stuff of that nature) and that, combined with age, left me with insufficient strength to keep doing what I’d been doing. I tried another drug. Focalin, in case you’re curious.
That’s when life began to open up. I’m still working on finding motivation without panic to drive me, but I’m getting there. It’s also okay now for me to learn about my interaction with the world, so I’ve been reading sporadically about ADD.
One of the criteria for adult diagnosis is that the ADD should have manifested in childhood. I was a little concerned that maybe the diagnosis wasn’t quite right because nobody in the practice had explored that part of my history extensively. That might mean that I didn’t have “true” ADD and my use of Focalin was “cheating.” Hey, that’s how I learned to think. However, I’ve kept with the drug because these folks, in addition to their testing, have had plenty of time to observe me in both clinical and non-clinical settings.
I decided to contemplate my own youth and see what was there. “Does not pay attention is class.” “Is not working up to potential.” “Quit jiggling–you know it annoys your father.” “Don’t be so damned impetuous all the time,” my father’s favorite.
The more of these I recall, the more comfortable I am with my diagnosis and treatment. I’m not bad. I’m not a slacker. In fact, given what I was working with, I did one hell of a job of working up to my potential. It’s going to be okay. Of course, I still write run-on sentences.
