A thing I wrote earlier today
Lately I’ve been having a crisis of faith, though not faith in a higher power, but rather of a faith in myself.
I don’t pick up on certain things as well as other people, and that kills me because I’d always thought I was smart. My parents are both college grads, my mother with a masters and my father with a doctorate, and they raised me with the firm belief that I was capable, smart and limitless. I followed this belief with all of my heart and soul and that belief system worked. I was a bright, precocious child to whom the world had no boundaries.
Till I hit seventh grade, at least.
Then I changed from the active kid everyone liked to the hyper kid that nobody liked. I was too loud, too eager, too excitable for everyone else’s maturing hormonal minds. My classmates were on their way to becoming grown men and women, while I was still in love with unicorns and fantasy books.
The diagnosis of ADHD didn’t come as a surprise to me, but it did come as a surprise to my parents. They’d wondered why I was getting bad grades, but they didn’t think that it was because anything was necessarily wrong with me. Things started to connect in their minds, like my inability to organize and my tendency to overreact in any and every situation. Yet they knew that ADHD has a tendency to slow as a person matured, and they clung to that.
I don’t think that’s happened yet, and that’s worrying them. It’s worrying me too, I mean hell, it is my future that we’re talking about. But I’m just not doing good enough. I’m on medication, I have a therapist, I know all of the coping techniques but that still can’t stop my impulsive tendencies or make me become truly responsible. And that inability to function is taking a toll on me.
I want to do good. I want that recognition. If I could overcome my ADHD by will alone, I would have bucked the disease years ago. However… I can’t. And even though I want to be able to tell myself to do something, I can’t. And the disappointed look on my parents faces is enough to make me want to just give up now.
I hate feeling stupid. I hate not doing well. I hate not getting the connections immediately. I hate my failure to succeed. And worse, I hate the loss of my belief in my intelligence.
I don’t feel smart anymore. I feel like an idiot savant, minus the savant. I have my moments of wisdom, sure, but they’re too specialized to do me any good. When is my knowledge of Elizabethan history going to do me any good when I’m trying to organize my finances? And as of late, the places where I have the greatest weaknesses are the places that I need to be strong in.
I need to be organized. I need to be financially ready. I need to be able to ‘buckle down and do it’. I need to do all those things well, and yet I can barely get a hold on them. What’s worse is that I know that I’m a failure. I know damned well that I’m worrying my parents and my loved ones. And yet… I can’t do it.
I yearn for the days that I could say ‘I can do anything because I’m smart!’. I’d give anything to go back to that mindset.
I just want to feel capable again.
I just want to be me.
And I’m scared, because I’ve got this feeling that I’ll never be right again.
I have this wish sometimes, and it’s pretty twisted. But I wish that I would be into an accident and hit my head so hard that I would never care again. I want to be so mentally handicapped that I can’t even feel guilt, and that’s so terrifying.
Why can’t I just be one or the other? I could live with just being dumb. I could handle that, because then people wouldn’t expect as much. Or I could handle just being smart, so that I could live up to people’s expectations easily. But instead I’m just stuck in this limbo of being both stupid and smart, and I can’t take it. Now I have the expectations of a smart person, and the condescending behavior because of my disease. I’m essentially set up to fail.
And what’s even more hellish is my need to do good and get recognition. I need to have people tell me that it’s okay because I don’t trust my own work. If I say that something’s good, I still have a voice in the back of my head disagreeing, and till I find someone else to verify my worth, I can’t let the damned thing go. And god forbid if someone doesn’t verify my work, because then I fall into this horrible realm of guilt.
Why didn’t I do better? Why wasn’t I more responsible? Why didn’t I think this whole thing through? Why did I just assume I knew the answer to this? Why did I have to fail so damned badly, just like every other time before? Why do I keep running into walls everytime I try to succeed? Why am I so stupid that my mind is a barrier in itself?
I don’t pick up on certain things as well as other people, and that kills me because I’d always thought I was smart. My parents are both college grads, my mother with a masters and my father with a doctorate, and they raised me with the firm belief that I was capable, smart and limitless. I followed this belief with all of my heart and soul and that belief system worked. I was a bright, precocious child to whom the world had no boundaries.
Till I hit seventh grade, at least.
Then I changed from the active kid everyone liked to the hyper kid that nobody liked. I was too loud, too eager, too excitable for everyone else’s maturing hormonal minds. My classmates were on their way to becoming grown men and women, while I was still in love with unicorns and fantasy books.
The diagnosis of ADHD didn’t come as a surprise to me, but it did come as a surprise to my parents. They’d wondered why I was getting bad grades, but they didn’t think that it was because anything was necessarily wrong with me. Things started to connect in their minds, like my inability to organize and my tendency to overreact in any and every situation. Yet they knew that ADHD has a tendency to slow as a person matured, and they clung to that.
I don’t think that’s happened yet, and that’s worrying them. It’s worrying me too, I mean hell, it is my future that we’re talking about. But I’m just not doing good enough. I’m on medication, I have a therapist, I know all of the coping techniques but that still can’t stop my impulsive tendencies or make me become truly responsible. And that inability to function is taking a toll on me.
I want to do good. I want that recognition. If I could overcome my ADHD by will alone, I would have bucked the disease years ago. However… I can’t. And even though I want to be able to tell myself to do something, I can’t. And the disappointed look on my parents faces is enough to make me want to just give up now.
I hate feeling stupid. I hate not doing well. I hate not getting the connections immediately. I hate my failure to succeed. And worse, I hate the loss of my belief in my intelligence.
I don’t feel smart anymore. I feel like an idiot savant, minus the savant. I have my moments of wisdom, sure, but they’re too specialized to do me any good. When is my knowledge of Elizabethan history going to do me any good when I’m trying to organize my finances? And as of late, the places where I have the greatest weaknesses are the places that I need to be strong in.
I need to be organized. I need to be financially ready. I need to be able to ‘buckle down and do it’. I need to do all those things well, and yet I can barely get a hold on them. What’s worse is that I know that I’m a failure. I know damned well that I’m worrying my parents and my loved ones. And yet… I can’t do it.
I yearn for the days that I could say ‘I can do anything because I’m smart!’. I’d give anything to go back to that mindset.
I just want to feel capable again.
I just want to be me.
And I’m scared, because I’ve got this feeling that I’ll never be right again.
I have this wish sometimes, and it’s pretty twisted. But I wish that I would be into an accident and hit my head so hard that I would never care again. I want to be so mentally handicapped that I can’t even feel guilt, and that’s so terrifying.
Why can’t I just be one or the other? I could live with just being dumb. I could handle that, because then people wouldn’t expect as much. Or I could handle just being smart, so that I could live up to people’s expectations easily. But instead I’m just stuck in this limbo of being both stupid and smart, and I can’t take it. Now I have the expectations of a smart person, and the condescending behavior because of my disease. I’m essentially set up to fail.
And what’s even more hellish is my need to do good and get recognition. I need to have people tell me that it’s okay because I don’t trust my own work. If I say that something’s good, I still have a voice in the back of my head disagreeing, and till I find someone else to verify my worth, I can’t let the damned thing go. And god forbid if someone doesn’t verify my work, because then I fall into this horrible realm of guilt.
Why didn’t I do better? Why wasn’t I more responsible? Why didn’t I think this whole thing through? Why did I just assume I knew the answer to this? Why did I have to fail so damned badly, just like every other time before? Why do I keep running into walls everytime I try to succeed? Why am I so stupid that my mind is a barrier in itself?