Growing and Changing Even at 34

Posted by SuperADDMom on August 4, 2009

Our life is very stressful. I’ve never denied that. I try not to whine about it, but I state the fact as such.  Some people are comfortable with that. Others, not so much.

What is the cause of our stresses? Struggling to live on low income pensions with our disabilities. With my issues, Hubby’s physical health  issues and trying to raise two very time demanding children with ADHD & PDD NOS traits, it can be hair pulling crazy some days.

Sadly though, a lot of the stress has a lot to do with me and my ADD traits. Being ADD and trying to “run” the day to day household stuff without a husband as an extra pair of hands for most stuff is not easy. I’m not mad about it. it is just a fact of life. I’m not an ADD Wife who has a hubby who can pick up the slack easily, and when he can, I’ve made such a mess of the kitchen, or the organization of things, he wears himself out physically before he can even help me. My ADD can be very bad at times, even with medication.

I grew up in a rural hick town where basic education was taught, and I  just made it through. I often feel like I don’t deserve the diploma I was given, and I feel very stupid at times. Math conversions when cooking are difficult, easy math without pen and paper or calculator ends up wrong. I have dyscalcula and dyslexia and that hinders me daily. I “don’t get” stuff a lot… “book smart” stuff just is not who I am. I cannot retain it.So it can be frustrating being married to a man who is very educated and knowledgeable about the world, because he tries to teach me stuff and I don’t retain it the next time we talk about the same thing, leaving us both shaking our heads saying “never mind”.

Tell me how to solve a  hands on issue and I usually can, but I would not be able to remember how to solve the issue without being told every time or following instructions. Baking I’m decent at with step by step instructions. Cooking organically by feel and taste,I am terrible at. It has taken me almost 8 years of our almost 11 year marriage for me to remember how The Mundane One likes to eat a sandwich…that should NOT be that difficult!

Anyway…so… by all social standards I’m what they would have called “mildly retarded” in the 50’s before political correctness became so fashionable. Don’t get all up in arms about me calling myself a retard… retarded means.. slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress.. look it up…literally I’m retarded. It takes me longer to “get it”.

By today’s standards, I’m sure they’d slap a label of “Gifted/Mildly Autistic with serious ADD” on me given all the natural talents and life struggles I have..I don’t care for labels, but if you wanna throw em all in one basket and display it on the table like art…that’s me.

No, I can’t count how many toothpicks are on the floor if you drop them, or remember every phone number I read scanning a phone book once, but I’m a visual organic learner, I taught myself to play guitar by ear at 13, and taught myself how to design html and css webpages by having ripped the coding apart to see how it worked, I taught myself to crochet and knit, I paint, I draw, I have a talent for Photography, I can sing and I write music by ear, I can sew, I can work a chainsaw, and power tools unlike most women I know and taught myself mostly how to cake decorate watching my mother as a teenager and some lessons from her a few times I went to her work with her to help her, and then lied my way into my best paying job I ever had in my 20’s on those skills as a cake decorator at a large grocery chain store. ( Hmm, is that talent, or cheating? a later post perhaps) But even with all that stuff. I’ve never really felt smart when jokes and conversations go over my head, books need to be exlained to me etc.

I cannot retain information the way other people do. I don’t read for fun…I can’t get through the second paragraph on the page if I have ANY distractions, and I often read standing or sitting in uncomfortable places so as not to fall asleep. Remembering definitions of words i KNOW to get the context of stuff  makes it not very much fun either. I KNOW the word. I know HOW to use it, in mot cases, but sometimes I just cannot grasp what I’m reading, and taking more time to look in the dictionary is no fun.

Cold hard fact books are what I usually read… it is easier to apply. I’m not unintelligent, in fact I’m pretty smart, so I’m told… but I have an issue with communication intake and output wise.

I have issues with taking things very literally, not thinking the way others do, being very “outside the box” and auditory processing stuff/sensitivities like people with mild autism do.

In person, communication SUCKS for me. I’m awkward, nervous and I read lips a lot, otherwise I don’t hear you. I feel dumb sayig over, and over. sorry what did you say. I worry about people getting tired of needing to repeat themselves. Thick accents are bad for me to understand. British movies are over my head mostly because I cannot understand what they are saying. This is frustrating for my husband who LOVES Monty Python movies, that I sit through only mildy lauging while he’s busting a gut.

Background noise & wind render me pretty much unable to talk to you unless we are 1 foot part and I watch your lips. the phone is horrifying for me. Too much noise in a store distracts me to a point of annoying me so badly, I become cranky and just want to flee the situation as fast as possible. My kids whining arguing gets to me faster and simpler then it seems to for other people.

Written/email/chat is better, but even 140 characters seems difficult at times due to the dyslexia as well, inability to tell tone implied in a statement etc. I tend to use a LOT of emoticoons.

Entries like this one is taking me going back and forth to this post ALL DAY to get it written in a way *I* think seems understandable. I feel like an alien very often, like Mork and/or Data combined…not able to say what I mean, in order to communicate with all you cool humans I really like and want to be like and have relationships with.

I feel like I cannot trust in my own self with anything I read due to dyslexia, and I cannot trust anything I hear others say to me, because I cannot literally hear them and I think they said something else totally different, or I apply a tone of voice not there, and react to that… and well…I just suck at it…I cannot easily explain to people what I MEAN, as apposed to what I actually SAY…I have MANY MANY George Castanza moments, where I want to go back and recreate the moment to use my too late funny/sarcastic/pithy comeback. ( I know that is “called something” but I can’t remember what it is right now) I don’t know how hubby has managed to deal with me like this for 10 + years! I know it MUST be true love!

It SUCKS being this way. I hate it. I mean, I know I’m not dumb, like “dumb and dumber”, or “can’t be articulate” kind of dumb….but I constantly feel inept, and stupid. Also due to my worsening ADD because I’m now on the other end of hormone fluctuations with early onset menopause,I’m VERY disorganized, scatterbrained, clumsy…”ditzy” for lack of a better term, and that makes all these issues worse as well.

Sooo…I was enjoyng using Twitter with hubby with a core group of funny people who like to joke around and throw sexual innuendo back and forth, and be flirty, and it was pretty fun, but it was getting stressful for me over the recent weeks…though it is fun….how long can I play the horny housewife/sexy little retard and be funny? I was feeling pressure to “stay funny”, when I felt I had nothing o offer these whitty funny people. I don’t think I’m funny BTW.. I just learned to use my sexuality early on in life to get by, and so I flirt well, and have an ability to make people smile or feel wanted, even it if it a shallow sort of way. Having been a singer and Karaoke Hostess in days gone by, I perfected the deal pretty well, and knew how to ramp up the flirt to bring the customers coming back and buying booze for the bar. It may be sexism/”selling myself” in a way, which I often struggled with, and was a large reason why I left the music industry, but people seem to like that.. so I’d flirt innocently, laugh at jokes, make a ew funnies myself, and all was good, and well, let’s face it , i DO have nice boobs…but I felt a lot like many of the people were only following me because I’m the mundane one’s wife anyway ( BTW HE”S the real funny in this family and no really mundane at all) I was having fun, but what started to really bother me is that I stress on the spelling mistakes I make, since Mr Man in the next room would correct every tweet by shouting to me that I spelled it wrong, etc. He was doing it let me know how to fix it in the future.  He’s not being rude or a jerk when he does that, he does it because he loves me and figures that if he tells me how to fix it, or point it out, one day it will stick, and because he knows how much it DOES bother me to have so many spelling and grammar mistakes in my  writing. The real issue is my pride. it is common among people with ADD…we spend so much time beating ourselves up for our shortcomings, that by the time someone else comes along and points them out, we are prepared to defend ourselves, argue why we did, explain the mistake away, so as not to “get in trouble”

If you’re an Adult ADDer, you may know what I’m talking about….ya…it sucks, and is the HARDEST thing for me to change about my communication with my husband, and others when I mess up. Usually I just get angry and lash out.

So,  last week was particularly bad failure week for me. As well as trying to “start fresh” and catch up on past failings that have accumulated over the last 6 months, and failing at THAT too, there was the added high expectations for a night out alone for the first time in a LONG time for huby and I, when a friend took both kids for the night! Though we enjoyed ourselves somewhat, the night failed to meet expectations, as well as give us a taste of what having alone time feels like, and it felt GOOD, and I think it was a large case of “what the eyes don;t see the heart don’t feel” so we were in a funk. Add in seeing how “non scatterbrained” I can be when the kids are not around, and how much easier it is to shop, talk, communicate and get things done around the house when I can think without them hanging off of me I was feeling pretty crappy.

I felt like a bad mother  for feeling this way, and felt like a bad wife for how much time computer/twitter etc sucks me in and shortens the time I have to keep the house up to decent standards etc.

Then, totally unrelated later in the day  Hubby and I had a miscommunication when I forgot something we had talked about  & I was trying to explain something to him…he accused me of trying to “explain away” the issue with ADD, and then that ALWAYS just makes me say you just don’t understand ADD then” , which is a hot button for him. He was apparently trying to teach me how to communicate what I MEANT better… and I lost my patience and blew up at him and said ”just forget it, I’ll never learn anyway, so WTF is the point!” in tears and I walked away with a lump in my throat. Of course that upset him, and yada yada yada a spousal spat ensued. Now, if your married for as long as we are you recognize them, and you deal with them, and you know you’ll be having sex again in a few hours.

But then, when I walked away, he did something he’d never done before, and it really ticked me off. He made a tweet about the moment we were having and I… in my haste, deep hurt and upset for being such a disappointment to myself and everyone around me, deleted my twitter account. I had read what he wrote wrong ( due to speed of reading/scanning and my dyslexia) and got very hurt and prideful that everyone we commonly talk to would think I called him an asshole when I didn’t… and I didn’t see that how he wrote it could have been taken in any way, and “saved” later if necessary, since it bothered me so much.

So,I decided in about 30 seconds right then and there that since no one understands me…what is the point of trying, and so I just deleted the account, figuring he’d be happy so he could gripe about his wife freely for funnies and no one would miss me.

Anyway…

Until Hubby, I never knew what unconditional love was. Trust me I’ve tested it in many ways and beyond limits that ANYONE else would have or should have ever stuck around for, but he did.

Some thought he was nuts for sticking it out so long. Others look at us from the outside, and think He’s controlling and rude because he hold me accountable, but he’s a pretty amazing guy. He is my foundation in this world, and without him, I am nothing. That’s not a “i need a man to be someone”, that is a “everyday, he makes me want to be a better person”.

He is my best friend, my biggest supporter, fan, and my soft pace to fall. But he is also the one who pushes me when I think I can’t go any farther, and calls me on my emotional crap, and….well this week he’s calling me on my stuff and I was not in a place to hear it because I was feeling so defeated already…so I sorta threw in the towel and had decided I was just gonna give up. Yep, I had a little mini meltdown. But it’s ok. they say these things need to happen to be the time to make bigger strides in positive change.

He was there for me. He let me cry…he talked it out with me, held me in his arms like every other time he has over the last almost 11 years

It is a difficult time for me emotionally, I am grieving a LOT from how I’ve wasted so much time not trying to make this stuff better sooner in our relationship. I feel like crap for being a disappointment to him and the kids so much, and it is not easy for me.

I’m “ok” but it is a process, an ongoing one…things wil get better, but last I checked the retard gene can not be removed, so there will always be struggles

If this sounds like a pity party, forgive me, because it technically isn’t. A pity party is when you piss and moan about some shit in your life, and then do nothing to make it better or fix it. I’m trying REALLY HARD in my life right now to do things better, and make things easier for us regarding the stress my neurodiversities cause us. It’s not easy.. I fail every day…( I do some stuff right, but seriously awesome sexual favours and making cheesecake don’t really count do they? )