I've still been suffering a little aftershock around here. Yesterday I felt myself slipping feet first into a muddly hole of depression and anxiety as I tried to come to grips with everything. I have been reading two books on ADD (lol), and feeling a mixture of relief and validation as well as the crashing-down realization of what having this has meant for me in my life. All those little things I've felt ashamed about, that I've tried to hide or apologize for or just fix on my own, well, it's nice to know other people have been there too, and it's not my fault and my condition is both my greatest blessing and an enormously elephantine challenge I've been trying not to look at. I've also been coming to grips with the fact that I think possibly all five of my children have it too in various forms and what that will mean for the future. I'm so glad that I can help them, though it's kind of a joke to think that someone like me has to help them learn to get organized and develop routines and not procrastinate! Ha. It's a good thing there are other people out there who are good at this who we can turn to for help. Yes, I'm crying my eyes out as I write this. I think I've needed a good cry for years, I just didn't know it. Just letting it all sink in and letting it hurt a minute before I screw my courage to the sticking place like I have done my whole life. In reading Delivered from Distraction I found it is common for many in my shoes to suffer also from PTSD (I can't remember when I posted about this, but remember when I was diagnosed with PTSD a while back? I thought it was just from all of our crazy moves and stress, but now I see the role this has played, too). For me, some of the trauma has come from watching my oldest son start to go through what I went through, and it is not fun (so much harder to watch your kid go through anything than go through it yourself, right?). He is the main reason I even sought help in the first place, because I did not want him to go through what I did.
Two nights ago when I said my prayers, I reached into my past and realized that the ADD thing is one of the things that has made my life so great and so full of adventure around every bend. And who knows if I would have had my sweet five kids if I had felt I had to be on medication the whole time? It's also helped me to be compassionate toward others and given me a depth of love and enjoyment of my little ones that maybe I wouldn't have felt otherwise (I'm learning that ADD'ers especially need people). Even if the help I'm looking for doesn't really change things, I think I need to finally come to some self acceptance and awareness and embracing of all of the good and bad parts of myself together as a complete package deal. Greatest curse and greatest blessing. (Also a good opportunity to see why having things like a big house are just not working out for me! I sensed this from afar, long ago, but somehow I'm always talking myself into things that are against my better judgement!) And, of course, in the end, that while I can use the diagnosis to help understand myself better, I can never let it be an excuse to not do my best, but rather as a jumping off point. And never to let it define me, but to let me define me.
Okay, now for a little comic relief as promised yesterday. First I must wipe the snot from my face.
Remember our little tooth-brushing fire truck video? Aw, how sweet. Just a few days after the posting of that video, my baby revolted against all tooth brushing, fire truck or no. Since then I've had to be even more creative-- think circus clown. On the way to visit my mom after a recent surgery, out of the blue I heard his voice in a deep forced growl say "I. NO. BRUSH. TEETH. ANY. MORE!"
Last night we had a little girl running around wide-eyed and screaming in her sleep. My husband, in an attempt to calm her, started asking her everyone's names (everyone woke up and was surrounding my bed, where he had her). She got all the names right until he got to her. When he asked her what her name was, she wailed "Apple Jaaaaaack!"
My little four year old calls coughing "choking." She wanted to go to a friend's house while she still had a cough. She promised me that she would "not choke in Presley's mouth."
Lately I'll absent-mindedly ask my baby if he is my big boy. He will say "no, I Emer." (Emerson)
Shoot, I know I had some more but I'm drawing a blank right now. Imagine that, will ya?
No more drama tomorrow, I hope. Thanks again for listening to my crazy tirades.
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