So, after a long weekend of tending to a dying budgie, and dealing with my daughter’s emotional roller coaster (that’s not over), I’m feeling kind of….blech.. not depressed, not “sad”… just raw I guess.
I’m sure it didn’t help that my Mother in Law dropped by unannounced today for her annual visit when she’s passing through the area.
She likes to stop by to take 20 minutes to stand on my driveway and completely rip my family/husband apart, minimize my parental & homeschooling abilities, make sure I know just how stupid I am for actually believing that my husband is ill ( for the last 7 years) and call him a lazy bum who needs to”just do more” and then…when she’s just about done informing me on the ways of motherhood and how I’m depriving my children of socialization by homeschooling, and THEN taking credit for the brains they have, she makes me look like an ass in front of my kids for never letting them go to her place for a visit. We are not involved in her life, but she sees to it to make this yearly visit, and I’m left explaining why we don’t. My husbands family pretty much abandoned him when he got sick, and continued to get worse, and because he’s disabled with an unexplainable illness ( CFS/ME) he’s just lazy in their eyes. Due to that we don’t have much contact, if any at all. The topper on the cake though, is that when she’s done all that she brags about the wonderful alcoholic asshole she decided to marry 5 years ago because she’s too emotionally messed up to grow up. Please don’t confuse that for bitterness…we’ve been perfectly happy the other 364 days a year to not think about her, or her crap.
Anyway… she ticked me off, as she usually does…
The other reason I’m feeling emotionally raw, is that I’m at a turning point in my life…with reaching the beginning stages of menopause, being a mother of KIDS, not babies, etc…I’ve suddenly been smacked in the face with the option of emotional adulthood, and it is appealing to not have to feel like a kid when I mess up, or make mistakes etc. Like many adults with ADD, we often tend to live a life feeling like a kid and like we are “getting in trouble” when the people around us express their disappointment, frustration and anger for our mistakes. This is common for adults with ADD due to the many mistakes we make over and over again all the time. I’ve never met an adult with ADD dxed in adulthood whohad NOT said they feel this way all the time with their spouses and boss etc.
Since I’m currently reading “Growing Yourself Back Up” it is bringing a lot of emotional baggage to the forefront for me, and I guess I’m vulnerable right now, and grieving in a way myself, but for totally other reasons, not related to the budgie.
ohhh….I know my mother reads this blog from time to time, so I want to say this first before I go any further.
Mom: Anything I write here you should NOT feel guilty about… we’ve cleared the air about parenting stuff a long time ago, and I don’t blame you for how I chose to behave in my life, thought I may have at one point in my life. My actions are my own,thought a lot of my habits may be based on how I was nurtured, it is up to me to figure out what habits need changing, or need tweaking, and work it to make sure I’m happy in life, and to make sure I do even better then what I knew growing up…it just is a part of life. When we know better we do better, and you did a MILLION times better than what you knew for nurture. I love you and dad for everything good you ever did for me, and do for me and my family now. Everything considered “bad” that I feel impacte how I deal with life now, and needs changing is my own to work through, and I’m not laying any blame. It is just a stuff I need to work on, just as you ( or anybody would) have to deal with your own stuff as well. If you want to ever talk about anything I write here, no matter how it makes you feel, I’m open to that. XOXO
Ok, so now…
Tonight I’m feeling dumb. Like “blonde dumb”, like “redneck backwater dumb”. I’m feeling sorry for myself I guess in a way, because I have dyslexia. I can’t spell well, and I am sitting here writing this blog, and website, feeling like though I have a good message in what I’m adding to the site for my ADDing Routine program etc.. I feel like a fraud of some kind because I can’t spell, my grammar sucks, and I never know when to end a sentence, use a comma, or change the paragraph in an article. I feel like people will pass by the message due to the delivery.
I look this stuff up on the web to write better, but I never retain it. My capacity to remember what I intake is terrible. Which is also making me feel stupid. I never ever felt like I deserved my high school diploma, and I often, though do NOT want to any longer be a special ed teacher in the system, because of how flawed the system is, and how underappreciated teachers are, I greive that I never went on to be a teacher. It’s kind of fitting that now I am homeschooling my own children with extra needs. I still desire to work with people with LD’s and neurodiversities, and many of my jobs over the years involved working with them.
I am NOT kidding when I say that my attention span is that of a gnat, and my ability to retain stuff is difficult… it has taken me 10 years to remember when I make my husband a sandwich, that he likes his bread toasted. So for 10 years, every second time I would bring him a sandwich, not toasted, and he’d not be able to eat it…( a texture thing).
Some people would see his response to this event and think he’s a controlling jerk, but I can tell you…that if you live a person for that long who can’t remember stuff about you, and it is supposed to be the love of your life, YOU’D start thinking they were either doing it on purpose to piss you off, or didn’t give a shit enough about you to care enough to do it the way you needed it done. It doesn’t matter how much I assure him neither is the case, after 10 years of MANY MANY untoasted sandwiches, he has a right to feel that way, and I feel terrible about it every time (and that just THAT, not any of the other things I do that I mess up)
This dynamic has colored my almost 11 year relationship with my husband, and right now I feel like complete shit for it on an accumulative level, while I’m “growing myself up”.
So all my life, and all my marriage I’ve been saying ” I’m sorry I didn’t mean it, It was an accident, etc etc. And that can only fly for so long, before it starts to become an argument everytime you screw up due to ADD. It TOTALLY SUCKS!
Because of my childhood, being undxed ADD and doing the same kind of crap, I now have an ingrained pattern when I mess up, break something forget something, or just in general disappoint someone…. I become MAJOR defensive, get bossy, snippy, and angry, and lash out. ANd then after that I spend a large amount of my time worried about people being upset with me, not liking me, or being angry at me for some unknown reason.
YES, how screwed up is that? *I* mess up…you get rightly upset with me…and I get upset back at you for noticing that *I* messed up.
Pretty messed up.
So tonight I’m sitting here grieving this stuff, and wishing I’d of come to this conclusion long ago, so my husband would not have to sit here, as I have this epiphany and say ” I’ve been telling you this for years, and it’s taken this book, ADD seminar/coach to say it for it to sink in?”
I feel bad, because now that I’m working to make the changes necessary to not do that kind of blaming, or getting defensive…he’s probably feeling once again, like I didn’t care enough to listen to him.
I love my husband, deeper than anyone could ever imagine. Our love is stronger then most relationships I’ve been witness to. But I attribute that ALL to my husband being the most patient dedicated man I’ve ever met. In our 10 year + years. I have given him EVERY reason to give up on me, I’ve given him every reason to move on and not have to live with my messups, and chaos…and yet, he’s here. I will never know how I ever got so blessed as to have him come into my life. but I cherish him deeply!
we have been through SOOOO much crap together in the last 10+ years, and we’ve been through some really GREAT stuff too. Everyday we battle ADD related stuff with me, and with the kids, and our daughters extra idiosyncrancies, and his chronic fatigue. But we still mange to make it through. I’m feeling very guilty right now working through this baggage, knowing that I caused SO much of the crappy stuff we’ve been through.
So….I’m just trying to work through this stuff. and I’m feeling vulnerable and he is MY best friend in the whole world! he is my soft place to
fall, and the foundation of my world,
