Do or Don't Do

 At my heart, I am a doer.  However, that is buried beneath a myriad of paralytic obstacles.

I have recently discovered the term, "executive dysfunction." Essentially, this is the brain working against itself to initiate implementation of a task. You want to do a thing, but your brain won't let you. This is a known issue for ADD and ADHD sufferers, but the struggle is not exclusive to them. It has to do with the wiring of the brain, and if there has been emotional trauma or physical trauma to the brain, executive dysfunction can occur.

I also recently discovered the term, "neurotypical," as my work is with an autistic population. I love this term. Instead of having to differentiate an individual on the spectrum, you can go the other way. The opposite term, "neurodiverse," doesn't even have to specifically indicate autism; it's a general term. How freeing! Imagine how different conversations could be, if, instead of identifying specific disorders to describe an individual (or explain some behaviors), this term could cover it all.

Ultimately, you don't owe anyone an explanation, but if you want to offer a succinct exposition bridging the gap of your struggles with a lack of them, describing yourself as "neurodiverse," could be the perfect compromise between allowing incorrect assumptions and providing your entire medical history.

Back to me. I have been diagnosed with ADHD, major depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder. I don't like talking about these things. It's not that I'm embarrassed by it; it's just that I try to stay positive and I'd rather discuss the things that are "right," with me than "wrong," with me. Learning about executive dysfunction and how it's intertwined with these struggles is both encouraging and disheartening. It's encouraging to know that I am not truly a lazy person, but it is disheartening to learn that it will be with me for the rest of my life and all I can do is learn how to work around or through it using a combination of therapy, medication, and practice.

Because I desire to do many things but I have always had this inner obstacle, many negative beliefs about myself were hammered into me, and now I have those to overcome, as well. It's been nearly impossible to get anything accomplished without a lot of shaming and negative self-talk along the way, and because this has been a pattern for such a long time, it's more comforting to beat myself down than build myself up. The fear that if I believe, truly believe, good things about me, then everything will be revealed to be a lie, utterly humiliating and devastating me, is very strong. Many things need to be unpacked and dealt with in order to combat this fear, but knowledge and awareness are half the battle, and I am fighting.

A new weapon in my fight is this term, "neurodiverse." If I think of myself as neurodiverse, I don't feel disappointed, ashamed, or defective. I honestly just feel like I have different processes and a different perspective - which I already did. Thus, some of my mountains became molehills.

Whether I do the things or don't do the things, I am still worthy of respect.

The Opposite of Clicking

Man, I don't feel like writing tonight. To be more precise, I want to write, but I can't seem to move myself in the direction of anything I'd like to work on. I spoke to my dear friend (and cherished accountability partner) earlier today about writing an essay. However, when it came to channeling the many thoughts and ideas raging about my cranium, I resisted. Me. After all, that's who lives in me, right? I'm even stubborn against myself, and when I push against that inner resistance, what erupts is anger, anxiety, and confusion.
Why, oh why, must I be such a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional complicated enigma of a device?? Oh, how I wish to be a simple machine of smooth movements and dependability. How can I offer anything to anyone when I can't even depend on myself?
This is turning into a self-indulging, self-pitying diatribe. It's not what I intended or even desire. This is mainly meant to be an exercise of my daily writing and/or journaling to keep those juices flowing.
I have a physical notebook in which I write out whatever, and I did flesh out some thoughts about generational traumas passed down from mothers to daughters, but when I took it out to type it up and work on it, I just didn't....feel like it?
Writing makes me feel amazing when it clicks, and when it doesn't, it's more than frustrating. It can best be described as the emotional equivalent of the sound of unpleasant metallic grinding. I guess that makes sense, since grinding is forced, and clicking is more natural.
There aren't many things that come naturally to me, and it seems that most things are a struggle. But I have come to be thankful for the struggles. After all, it's struggle that builds strength, not ease. Once again, I can only hope - and this hope comes like light through a pinhole - that it means I will have meaning and use. I don't seek it for glory. I seek it for the same basic reason that drives me in everything I do and want; to be essential and to not be a bother. "To not be a bother" is more important; to be essential is more a wish than a priority - part of the fantasy of having meaning.
This is starting to sound self-indulgent again.
I digress.
This is yet another throw-away blog entry; meant only to grease the wheels of the machine instead of feeding it. It's all part of the journey.
"Yes, Lord, yes," is something I say to myself when I'm feeling a little frustrated but I want to thank Jesus for the challenge and accept the challenge - for the exercise to build strength. It also mostly quells whatever flutters of anxiety threaten to shake me.

Yes, Lord, yes. I accept this.

Again with this

I had some darkness last night, during which I felt very strongly and helplessly that there was no escape and it was irrevocably all my fault. I was weeping bitterly, but that barely conveyed the depth of despair I felt. So useless, pointless, empty. So stupid. So wrong. So trapped by by own stubbornness, ineptitude, and poor decisions. Even the thought of death seemed unable to balm my scorching sadness.

Finally the darkness and pain could be corked enough for me to calm down and fall asleep.

Yet again, I dreamed of him. Yet again, his presence demanded more of a narrative structure than my dreams usually carry.
In this dream, he had once again been able to bring himself to forgive me enough to engender a renewed friendship between us. We were both in our hometown. He was riding motorcycles with his dad, saw my car (a certain red car I have long since owned), and stopped down the road, though I had ducked down. I saw in the mirror that he was mouthing words, so I stepped out of the car and approached him. He was asking me if I was planning on attending an event that our mutual friends had planned. I said that I wasn't sure (unsaid was that I wasn't sure that he wanted me there). He smiled and expressed a hope that I would be there.
The events of the dream that followed is not nearly as important as the feelings. Though the setting of the dream was fictional, it felt real enough - I was living at my parents' house, in my old room again, though still working my current job and still with my boyfriend - but the feelings shone through any dreamy haze and burned into me.
I was so happy that he was in my life again. I was so happy that he was trusting me again, but I was afraid. My attraction to him was re-asserting itself and I wanted him, but because I still had a boyfriend, I was scared that he might view any physical overture as validation of his past accusations. Despite this, however, he began to make passes at me as we spent more time together. I liked it, but kept myself in check. We even casually discussed marriage, and the possibility of him taking me all over the country with his naval career. He asked if I would be lonely and miss my family, but I said that if I did, it would be worth it to start my own.
Ultimately, nothing was resolved (neither the feelings nor the events), and the dream once again descended into whimsical nonsense before I awoke.
In the background of this dream, I had admitted to myself that I miss him. It wasn't a satisfying admission, seeing as everything involving his presence in my life remains unresolved. I'm not even sure that I do miss him. It's possible that I mourn what my life could have been if things between us had been different.
It keeps coming back to the same thing; the bottomless regret of my own stubbornness and impulsive actions. There are moments in my life wherein I feel no control over my actions. It's terrifying, and in hindsight it is just as frightening. The thoughts accompanying the past actions are a blank space. I can't recall what I thought or why I did what I did. I do what I can to be more mindful and more present in the moment to prevent such things in the future, but it's not something I can trust in myself because of my lack of focus. So. I can't always control myself, and when I can, I can't seem to force myself to take advice or do what I need to do.

So here we are on the other side of a meltdown caused by the belief that my life is not what it should be, and the feeling that I'm a failure of every dimension of my existence. And in the wake of that meltdown, I received a visitation in a dream to hammer the concept home. And to bring to surface a fear which, until now, I didn't want to put into words. This is the fear that in the future I could only experience any kind of vivid feeling or emotion in these dreams of fiction, and that in my waking state, I would continue to barely feel "ok" enough to function and that my existence would be just survival.

I do feel actual joy slowly ebbing away in my life. Feelings of true contented happiness, joy, excitement are becoming fewer and farther between as I go on. What's worse is that I don't even know what can make me happy anymore.
I don't know how to sustain myself. I do know that I have to, though, and I can at least do the things that I have to.

Feeling Grateful

I'm feeling very grateful this evening.
I'm grateful for my job, my family, my friends, my boyfriend, and my situation. This feeling is a stark contrast to my emotions about a week ago. I can at least mostly attribute those to an especially severe episode of PMS. As usual, that is both a relief and terrifying. It's a relief to know what it is and to be able to somewhat predict its intrusion. It's terrifying that I am vulnerable to this every month. Unfortunately I'm usually unable to logically identify that my feelings are being caused by chemical turbulence while I'm in the the throes of the worst of it and must instead rely on my own dogged stubbornness to get me through it.
Why is it that stubbornness would get me through it?
Why must I be stubborn? What must I keep from quitting?
...
Life. I must keep from quitting life.
In the worst of my lows, PMS-caused or otherwise, everything about life seems an overwhelming struggle and I seem hopelessly inadequate to the task. I have never considered this to term me as, "suicidal." I have never seriously considered killing myself. That is a threshold I hope never to cross; mostly because as with other psychological thresholds, once crossed the barrier virtually disappears and it its place remains just a memory of what it was to fear the thing. I have crossed such thresholds.

I have only half-wished to cease existing. Though it sounds mild in comparison to actual suicidal ideations, the half-wishes are always wrought with astounding pain.

I don't want to disappoint or hurt anyone, and I don't want to miss out on something down the road. When I'm feeling like this, I can forgive myself and hope/work for progress.

And in the Middle of the Night

I count myself lucky to be blogging right now on my beloved Chromebook while I'm working an overnight shift at my job. I impulsively agreed to work a second shift, partially hoping that I would get some writing done during the graveyard shift.
There's wi-fi on my unit, but the password is a ridiculously coveted secret, and one of the supervisors (who likes me and knows my work ethic enough to have confidence that I wouldn't abuse the wi-fi and would still do my usual diligent work) entered the golden password into my Chromebook one evening, and voila! I have access in order to transform my boring downtime into valuable productivity. Huzzah! I'm not being sarcastic. Having that possibility opened up to me seriously felt like Christmas morning.
Thus.
Having it with me tonight ended up being the deciding factor in my staying for third shift.
Here I am; I finished my paperwork and am now freed up to work on my novel.
Aaaand nothing is happening. I brought my outline, and I even began a brainstorm and list of characters. I was ready to dig in, and then all of a sudden my accumulated fatigue came upon me like a heavy blanket, and I can't stop thinking about blankets and pillows.
This is why I stopped picking up overnights for a while. I love the quiet and the downtime (I can basically watch Netflix the entire time), but holy crap I'm just so tired the whole time. I'm hoping, however, that my recently shifting sleeping habits would aid this. Lately, I can't even sleep until almost 2am, I usually wake up anytime between 4:30 and 6:30 and I'm unable to go back to sleep for at least a couple hours, and then I can easily sleep until at least noon. It's random, inexplicable, and frustrating. Because of this, I have decided against picking up first shifts as my extra shifts and try overnights again.
Also.
Administration just raised the differentials for second and third shifts by seventy-five cents, so that will be helpful to my financial goals.
I'm honestly just rambling in this blog post to both get my writing juices flowing and to stay awake. It's 3am. I'm only halfway through. If I'm not able to get right to sleep when I finally get to bed, I'm gonna be super pissed.
If I worked harder on my self-discipline with working out and writing, would I be less likely to fall into my depressive lows, I wonder? Would I be further less likely to fixate and hyper focus on my romantic life because I would feel more self-satisfied?
Do I need to be on my own, or do I need to push through everything and finally settle down for real with my boyfriend? I like how close we are and how well we get along, but I want to be single. I miss my independence. That's the truth.
I'm developing a headache from fatigue. I'm wrapping this up and I'm going to force out some words for my novel. Here's to more overnights and writing sessions!
You read this for some reason, and I thank you. God bless!

Blessed Illumination

God is good.
Wow.
GOD IS GOOD.
I haven't blogged in a while, mostly because I was focusing my writing energies into my fictional endeavors, and still am, but going forward I'm going to try to consistently exercise both.
I'm still very much struggling with my mental health. A couple months ago, my psychiatrist purported that I am bipolar. Though I suspected it for a long time, to have it confirmed slammed me pretty hard. I am not personally familiar with anyone who struggled with bipolar disorder, and so I was plagued with stigma and myth. My psychiatrist explained that it is a spectrum disorder and I had exhibited symptoms closer to the mild end of the spectrum rather than the extreme.
It explained many things in my life. She wanted to prescribe me a mood stabilizer, but immediately the alarms went off in my head. I absolutely did not want to add something new to my medication regimen. I asked about the side effects and they sounded terrible, so I rejected the prescription. Instead, I wanted to document my moods day by day to determine if I truly needed a mood stabilizer.
I am still on the fence about it.
Even though I may choose not to take medication, the diagnosis of bipolar disorder has been an aid in and of itself. I have begun research; I'm compiling a reading list. I have also drawn up a prototype mood meter or gauge for my documenting. Just this small step has already been a huge help in identifying my own feelings.

That said, I was beginning to feel that I was having an especially low day today. I was beginning to sink in the same old thoughts and ruminations that I'm stuck where I am in my life and I don't know how to get out of it or fix it. As I usually do when I feel like that, I simultaneously try to problem solve it and pray that God show me the way and give me the strength to follow it while accepting that I will probably feel utterly depressed for the foreseeable future.

I got the strong feeling to write out my feelings about the situation exactly. I hadn't realized that I  had been afraid to actually put into words the worst of how I'm feeling about my boyfriend and our situation. As I described my feelings, I was able to finally admit to myself what it was that I wanted. In my writing I unapologetically wrote out a plan. The clouds began to be parted. Light shone in the darkness. We've been seeing my therapist together and our next session is next week, and now I know exactly what I want out of it and what I need to say.
One of the things I need is my own car again. Thanks to my budgeting and working overtime, I have been able to get some saving started. Thanks to this focus and drive, I'm able to seriously look into it and budget for it.
This is all possible because I'm able to pick up more shifts.

All of this is possible because for the first time in a long time, any background anxiety about my job is virtually gone. Lately I haven't had the constant anxiety about going to work, people at work, events at work. I've been able to handle a lot of things that used to make me nervous, and because of that I can take almost everything in stride. My tolerance and patience has been multiplied because of the strength God has granted me.
I have what I need to do what I need to do to get where I need to go, or at least on my way to it.
Thanks to my recent diagnosis, I've been able to reflect on my emotions and reactions to them and this led to a realization that I have been unconsciously self-sabotaging on some level because I'm afraid of being successful and/or happy because I have been equating happiness with what I can now identify as mania.
Identifying the difference between happiness, or at least contentment, and mania is opening a door for me to finally change patterns in my life in a big way.
I have been pushing so hard and slowly building up to the organizational level and self-awareness to embark on this path that is now more clearly illuminated.
Something else that I learned this evening, or maybe I somehow already knew it and it was just reinforced enough to be brought into my conscious understanding; that when you're praying to God for an answer, really you just need the bravery to be honest enough with yourself to admit the answer you've been fearing.

GOD IS GOOD.

Tonight I was able to completely turn around my despair, and I am still basking in this blessed illumination.