Shaky Egg

dude! I got me some ADD meds!

I told the doc I was still depressed and I was willing to try anything. He was about to give me the same medicine I took before on top of my horse dose that made me feel so bad, and I was willing to try it again anyway because I’ve been feeling so emotionally poorly, when I said as an afterthought, can you test me for ADD? He said, there is no test. I said, well then how would you know? He said, you would have a history of irritability, distractability… I said if you ask my mother I believe she’d say that was true. When you invoke the mother, after all, it’s gospel. He looked like a light bulb went off in his brain. He said that in many cases if you treat the ADD the depression goes away, and that in women the distractability is often much worse than the traditional hyperactivity. Amphetamine for all! What a freaking relief. Now if we can try out an OCD med I’ll be in business [I've been having to drive back home check the stove lately].

Why am I so happy about getting ADD meds, when I was so unhappy about my stepson taking them? Because he is TEN. His liver and other bodily systems have got to last him a lot longer than mine have to last me. And because to me and I hope this isn’t wishful thinking his acting out is a result of needing his father, unresolved grief from his parents’ divorce, and the fact that his issues and his mom’s issues work on each other (and that new fiancee don’t help either). And because I want to observe him myself for a good long while, and get him evaluated if needed, and get his diet healthy if not completely free of sugar, dyes, dairy and white flour, before I allow him to pickle his brain with drugs.

I pray he’s not as miserable as I am, though… because if he is I am denying him something he really needs.

I on the other hand have to work, all day every day, in a regimented and toxic environment, parent, clean the house, try to have a life… I had to have drugs to maintain my rock n roll lifestyle. I don’t feel much different but it’s only been a few days. If anything I feel just marginally better.

What if, what if what if… what if this was the magic bullet that suddenly made me normal? Even as I was thinking that, the other day, I realized how diseased it is to think that a pill would make me normal. But what if… what if I’m not as miserable as I think I am and the ADD med (and/or an OCD med) helped me clear my head and just be where I am, instead of in about fifteen different exhausting states and scenarios at any given time?

Honestly, I’m a bit nervous taking so many meds. I am going to peel back on the anti-d this spring, and see how that goes.

I am reading (and LOVING) Skinny Bitch. I guess if I love that book I must be a bit sick, because it’s very mean. It really rakes the American diet over the coals, and it is just sickening. But it is just giving me a ‘girlfriend can we talk’ about things I really want to examine at this point in my life. I have now given up caffeine, and I put orange juice in my decaf constant comment instead of milk and sugar. I haven’t been able to completely quit smoking, but I don’t smoke in the morning until after I drop my children off at school, and the smoking window in my day is getting smaller and smaller.

As I incorporate lifestyle changes such as that, I will, I hope, also be improving my mental state. But I have my other foot in the camp that says that if you have it you have it, and saying that you can manage it with lifestyle is like saying you can manage a broken arm with lifestyle. It’s some of each I realize, and wellness is rooted in being willing to own it and take charge of it and take care of oneself. Meds, exercise, diet, family and social support, hobbies, job situation… they all contribute for better and for worse. It’s a continuum, with chaotic weather events at random places, and I just have to own it and go on. It’s a f*cking miracle I get as much done as I do.

In other news, we just got home from watching Night at the Museum. It was much more fun than I’d expected.

I wish someone would pay me to teach a course in which I explicate ‘books everyone should read because then the world would be a better place’. A Room of One’s Own is a key book on that list. Hell I’m a librarian. With a literature degree. And a vehement defender of marginalized groups. And I have years in the mental health field, both working in it and as a client. I have the credentials. I should just go ahead and offer it, and charge for it and see what kind of income I could pull down by starting my own secular humanism university. Okay I copyright that idea. It’s mine. I need that career. Nobody steal it. I’ll work it up.

But I welcome suggestions to add to the list.

Another is The Verbally Abusive Relationship by Patricia Evans. The sorts of thought patterns she describes– well, duh, we don’t call people names. We don’t interrupt them. We don’t scream at our children on any sort of a regular basis, preferably we don’t anyway. We don’t– xyz behaviors our parents tried to teach us. But when I read that book I am just stunned. So many things that pass for normal, at least in my house, my family of origin house as well as my current house, and in many of my friends’ homes (not you M!!!), are totally within the abusive pattern, so diseased, so damaging. It is unbelievable. I’ve become hyper sensitive to it, and I hear it EVERYWHERE, especially at my job. I hear it in the way some of my friends describe interactions with their husbands. It’s awful. I have been kind of depressed about it, that I’ve let this go on for so many years… that I’ve been on the receiving end and have just about bought into it, and that I’ve been on the giving end, and haven’t known it.

As devastating as that sounds, though… and it is… I am grateful that I know now so I can call it what it is and eliminate it. Luckily the book I’m reading, another one by Evans, gives some tools to replace those verbally abusive communication methods with. Cause if it didn’t… if we eliminated verbally abusive communication methods, we wouldn’t have a damn thing left to say. Even when we’re getting along we talk that way. No wonder our arguments are so horrible! Augh!

Also as devastating as that sounds, I am actually managing to have a bit of joy these days as well.

I am in the grip of Eloise Mania. I LOVE those books. I don’t know why. I LOVE them. They aren’t on the list of books everyone should read, but man I love to read them to my little girl. I have the Eloise movie too. I can’t wait to watch it with my girl. My stepson and husband might even like it. I’ve caught my husband listening and snickering when I’ve been reading the books out loud.

As I (hope I) become more focused, maybe some of this negative chatter in my head will die down and I can actually concentrate on just enjoying.

All right… that’s all for now. Thank heaven for Patricia Evans and Adderall.