Neurodivergence, or: We always hang in a Buffalo Stance/We do the dive every time we dance

OK, so, I know you're not supposed to diagnose yourself using social media.

And this is not exactly what I've done.

But I've discovered that one of the best things about memes is that they've helped me learn about my neurodivergence, and they've shown me I'm not alone.

I was diagnosed with ADHD a couple years ago. It was a huge relief. I've been very open about this and written about it a little.

This diagnoses explained so many things about me that were either pieces of me that frustrated me and made me insecure, or were things that made me feel like I was kinda quirky, and if you appreciated quirky, you might appreciate me extra.

Or not. Because it works both ways.

There were things I'd try to hide, because for a long time I wanted to seem normal. Ha. 

And there were lots of things I did that I didn't think about one way or another until someone pointed them out to me.

Now, there are numerous memes about autism and ADHD, and it seems like they share commonalities and maybe even significant overlap. I don't know anything about autism. But a lot of these memes resonate with me.

I don't assume that just because my brain works in a particular way means that someone else's brain works the same way.

But ooh, it's nice to learn that those similar-brain-working-people are out there!

I've delightedly learned that I'm not alone.

There are other people in the world who will choose a song and play it on repeat 372 times. There are people who will go back to the beginning of the song if they dissociated and missed part of it.

I honestly didn't know other people did that.

I also didn't know that other people just checked out for a while and then dropped back in and realized they'd missed a significant part of the song. Or the conversation. Or the lesson.

Whatever might be going on, that continued to go on while my brain went myriad other places. Or not really anywhere, but not here.

So sometimes I learn that all along, I've been approaching things in the same manner as other neurodivergent humans.

And then I sometimes I learn I take a neurodivergent approach from someone telling me not to do what they assume I do, because it's (apparently) what most people do.

Like, my yoga teacher is always making daily tasks into opportunities for strengthening or stretching.

So the other day he was giving us examples like when you soap yourself in the shower, do forward fold. When you're drying off, raise your straight leg up and put your foot on the sink, so you get that strengthening and stretch.

And so on.

He said not to just stand at the sink when you brush your teeth. He, personally, holds horse stance.

Use all the small opportunities.

But I was like, who stands at the sink when they brush their teeth?

(Do you?)

When I brush my teeth, I'm always wandering around trying to do also something else. Like remove or put on my socks with the other hand. Or pull on or take off my pants. Or open a jar.

I  have successfully removed my tee shirt while brushing my teeth, but it's a big hassle and the chances of getting toothpaste on your shirt are high.

The chances of flinging your electric toothbrush through the head hole and across the room are also high.

So it's really not worth it.

But I've always tasked my self with something hard to do one-handed. I guess most things are hard to do one-handed. 

This is never a time-saver, in case you're wondering.

I'm not offering up helpful tips or tricks.

No. 

It's more like it never occurred to me to stand at the sink. Why would I just stand at the sink when I can wander and even mildly complicate my life?

Who, I wondered, stands at the sink the whole time?

My husband. 

My husband stands at the sink the entire time he's brushing his teeth.

He's surely done this throughout our 16 years of marriage, because he's done this every morning and night that I've observed in the last couple weeks.

But I've never noticed, because I'm busy not successfully accomplishing tasks one handed in the next room.

Me, I'm now aiming for horse stance.

(Also, this is really the only way to eat raspberries.)

Do not go gentle into that Teams meeting

Every Christmas of my childhood and beyond, we listened to a record of Dylan Thomas reading "A Child's Christmas in Wales." 

It's a short and charming tale, if you're not familiar with it, and the way he reads it is marvelous.

But some Christmas Days, probably at the surly teenage ages and up, we just wanted to read our new books or play with our new toys or just retreat to our corners and not all sit in the living room together next to the record player hearing each other breathe.

Did we eventually have it on tape? CD? We must have. I just found it on YouTube.

Christmases were hard for my dad, and he was always melancholy, but because we weren't allowed to talk about it I don't know if it was family trauma, or abuse by Catholic priests when he was an altar boy, or Vietnam, or seasonal depression or regular depression or possibly bipolar disorder. 

I feel the weight of these less and less as I heal, but so often I have questions I'd like to ask...and there's nobody to ask.

My Uncle Jack passed away a few weeks ago. He was the last of that generation on both sides of the family, for me. 

I didn't know him growing up, but I'd gotten to know him a little as an adult. Donna, his partner after his wife passed away, was a dear childhood friend of my dad's, and they and my parents would get together.

A year or two before my dad died, he and Donna decided to go skydiving. Something he'd always wanted to do. He was delighted to have a partner with equal enthusiasm.

My mom and Uncle Jack stayed on the ground, while Dad and Donna soared.

But losing Jack felt like losing my mom all over again. She was the only person in my family who would keenly feel this loss.

Grief is endlessly surprising.

Anyway, from teen years to medicated years, for ol' Dylan Thomas, I was fully in the throes of seasonal affective disorder—except when we had Christmases south of the equator in heat and sunshine, which in my opinion is the way to go.

So surely I was rage raging against the dying of the light and it had nothing to do with my family or Thomas—who I adore as a poet and storyteller and as such, feel a little guilty for bastardizing his beautiful lines.

But clearly not guilty enough!

I don't know much of anything about the Welsh, except that Wales looks so beautiful and Fiona studied there and the Welsh were very fierce though unsuccessful in their uprisings. 

And also, after watching Doc Martin, I really want to go to Cornwall.

If you like the British murder villages but get tired of death, I highly recommend Doc Martin. 

I do realize they're not interchangeable. But apparently the Cornish were problematically fierce for the English as well.

Anyway, the main point of this story is that I had to be on a Teams meeting with Jordan's school.

Microsoft Teams hates me. The feeling is mutual.

If I try to attend on my phone, it says I have to download the app. But I deleted the app, because I never had the correct login information. So I thought I could get around it by getting rid of it.

No.

It knows that you're on a phone, and you can just go to the app store. So it's like, bitch, get the app and then come talk to me.

So now I make sure I'm on a laptop. But it has to be my mom's laptop, because the sound on mine is broken.

So I logged in 45 minutes ahead, just so that I knew I could. Like getting to your gate at the airport to make sure it's there, and then you can get a snack and use the bathroom.

Teams meetings derail my entire day up to the point where I successfully (or not) connect.

When we had meetings with India's teachers, I did everything right—right time, right laptop, right link—except it was a link for a teacher whose class she no longer has.

So then Nick called and I said, "I went to the fucking link they sent us but it's a link to the Chinese teacher and why do we fucking have to use fucking Teams I hate Teams so fucking much..."

And he said, "Dear, we've started the conference and I've got you on speaker, and two of India's teachers are on the line."

I apologized profusely for the profanity. They both laughed (I think) and said no children were present.

Apparently a couple minutes before they'd asked if they should wait for me to start the conference and Nick said the odds were I was struggling with Teams, and I'd be along shortly swearing about the platform. 

Which just confirms what I've long believed: people don't change as they age. 

They just become more so.

This was, you understand, prior to my Tabarnac Era. Also, my friend Brian recently reminded me of my interest in "What the Dickens?"

But Teams gets the full extent of my profane wrath.

Which is to say that on the whole I'm fine, and in this photo, I was in Puerto Rico with my children for spring break.

The day we got there, I was inhaling humid tropical air, and reveling in the foliage of my childhood. Bougainvillea always makes me happy.

Sometimes I think things but am not sure if I said them out loud, and so I ask if I said something out loud and people will tell me I did or didn't.

But in this case, I said, "When you guys are gone, I'm moving to the tropics." And my kids were all, WHAT? 

And I was all, oh did I say that out loud?

I said it out loud.

And so then I was like, OK, not really, haha I just love tropical weather. 

And now it's 90 in DC, thank goodness, because I was pretty sure it was going to be cold here for the rest of my born days.

All good. Carry on.

Just don't make me attend a Teams meeting.

Vyvanse, day 1

I told you ADHD is my new topic.

Also: this photo has nothing to do with this post, but it popped up recently and I don't think I ever shared the glory of me being the Tooth Fairy with you. 

I didn't win the office costume contest, and I couldn't fly because my wings were upside-down. But I did get some very weird looks on my walk to and from work.

And honestly, I wish I'd blogged about my journey with antidepressants, because then I'd have a record. Because at this point I cannot remember what all I've tried.

Like, I know I hate Wellbutrin because it makes my whole body clenchy and makes me constantly enraged.

Zoloft made me sleepy. And messed with my marital life. The confusingly spelled Viibryd, while sounding like a marital enhancer, did the opposite.

Mirtazapine helped me sleep, but was also the opposite of a marital aid, and made me gain weight. Which made me more depressed. So all around not my ideal antidepressant.

So far, Trintellix for the win!

But there have been a smattering of others in the mix, and every once in a while someone asks me if I've been on one...and I can't remember. Maybe? Odds are?

Anyway.

I saw my beloved primary care provider yesterday. I told her that I was feeling like kind of a basket case.

We talked about my concerns with Adderall and my hair, with which she completely sympathized. We have, in fact, had some in-depth hair discussions, as we regularly bump into each other in the neighborhood and she now goes to my hairdresser.

She asked if I could cope without ADHD meds (or if I wanted to), and I got all teary.

I mean yes, I can cope, because I've done so for decades, and for the most part I'm a fairly functional human. But the truth is, once I realized it didn't need to be so hard, I want it not to be so hard. And by "it" I mean everything. 

I really, really liked how they organized my brain. I liked the quiet inside my head. I know they're stimulants, but it was soothing.

Does that sound weird? Probably, unless they do the same to your brain, in which case maybe you totally feel me?

At any rate, I told her about my googling and my forays into Reddit, and how people who reported hair loss with Adderall did not have the same issue with another medication. So I asked if we could try something else.

She was more than happy to. She really, really wants me to feel good.

So now I have a Vyvanse prescription.

And she ordered a bunch of blood tests in case it's my thyroid or a vitamin deficiency or something else. 

Or maybe it's hormonal? I mean, I currently sleep in a cool room—and I know it's cool because I ask Nick. I'm like Peeta after being tortured with tracker jacker venom.

"It's so hot in here! Real or not real?"

Not real.

I walk around asking if it's hot all the time. 

Which is ridiculous, because when it's actually as hot as the surface of the sun in DC, I'm delighted.

But hot flashes are a particular kind of hot that feel like being stuffed into a sauna filled with fleece blankets. 

I love a sauna but not when I'm just sitting quietly watching Endeavour on Masterpiece Theatre, which is what Nick and I do at night because we have effectively turned into our parents.

We sleep in a cool/cold room, and! I have a robust fan blowing directly on me. Which makes me cold but then I get hot and then I get cold but then I get hot and this is the game I play all night every night.

Which I will be discussing with my GYN.

I've explained to my kids that they are heading into puberty, and their hormones are increasing, and so if they notice that sometimes they're upset or angry or really sad out of the blue, and it just feels beyond their control, it's totally normal. I said that we might have a few difficult years, because these hormonal shifts make people really moody.

Then I told them that basically my body is doing the same thing in the opposite direction.

And they were like, so sometimes you're really angry or sad or upset because of your hormones and you feel out of control? 

Yes oh my hellyesandmoreyes!

It's quite a party at our house.

ANYway.

I'm still not up there with most productive humans, my husband being one of them—because my gosh, does that man get an extraordinary amount of stuff done! 

But today I have done myriad tedious tasks, including many that involve calling people I don't know (which I postpone because calling people I don't know) to make appointments for several of my loved ones, and sitting on hold for long long lengths of time. 

I scanned the kids' health forms and filled out other forms to which I affixed India's health forms so that she can play sports. 

Forms upon forms!

I called the pediatrician and had a lengthy conversation with a staff member about how to set up two separate children on their brand-new and rather confusing—for them as well as for me—portal. 

The whole thing ultimately involved using two separate email addresses because otherwise the system thought it was all for the same kid.

I won't bore you further but it was the kind of process that I typically avoid until it's beyond unavoidable just because it's detailed and confusing and boring. 

But today I powered through.

Not to brag, but do you know how many portals I have? So many! Because I myself have a number. And then I take care of a couple for my mom. And then there are these two new portals rather than just one for my kids. And school portals. And a sports form portal.

What I really need is a portal to another dimension just to pop out of this reality every once in a while.

And on a side bar, do you understand the multiverse? I feel like I believe in it but am not smart enough to actually wrap my brain around it.

But back to this universe: I also made mammogram and GYN appointments.

All this to say, so far so good on the Vyvanse and I'm pretty proud of myself.

I'm also exhausted because dusk is upon us at 4:248 PM and by 8:00 PM my brain is all, "OH MY GOD IT'S A MILLION O'CLOCK! 

You should resist going to bed and instead eat some sugar!"

And really, who am I to argue?

Let's talk about ADHD, let's talk about you and me...

(This is my brain on Adderall.)

Spinderella cut it up one time...

OK, sorry.

Anyway.

For years I've joked about being all, "Oh, look, a squirrel!" And then getting totally derailed from whatever I was thinking or doing. 

I've mentioned humorously that I was never able to create outlines, because you had to decide on the importance of the information for Roman numerals I, II, and III and their sub-letters and numbers. 

All the information at each level had to be of parallel importance. This was impossible for me.

I could never figure out the exact parallel importance. What if II was slightly less important than I? Could I still put it as its own whole thing? Or should it go underneath?

I'd wind up with a Roman numeral I with a million items underneath.

Which does not a decent-grade-worthy outline make.

Now I make my outlines with dashes. All dashes. Or dashes with dots underneath.

Maybe they're just more lists?

And when I had to organize things like events for work, I'd tape all of the pieces of information to my office wall. This surely looked crazy and chaotic, but I assure you it was nothing compared to the inside of my brain trying to keep all that information organized.

So, back to the squirrel. Or any kind of interruption in task, either created by someone else or myself.

I'd leave the task and not loop back to it for...who knows how long. Because 17 other little tasks can always get in the way.

Typically I bounce from one to the next, not necessarily completing anything until I'm up against a deadline. Then I'm great at being balls to the wall and getting it done.

"Balls to the wall" is an expression I quite enjoy. It's so visual and really rather uncomfortable, isn't it?

Anyway, on any given day at home, I might start in the kitchen making tea, leaving it to steep on the counter while I go in the back to start laundry, which makes me remember that I need to order more detergent, which leads me into email to a return label I need to send Nick to print out, which reminds me that I should ask him about taking India to basketball on Sunday, and oh my gosh, I have to make that appointment for my mom...

I might return to my steeping cup of tea two hours later, because I happen to walk through the kitchen and notice it.

By then it's no longer freshly steeping, no longer piping hot. I put it in the microwave and walk away, and...

Ultimately brew a whole new cup hours later. 

So.

Early in the pandemic, Jordan was diagnosed with inattentive type ADHD. 

And the more I read about executive functioning and executive dysfunction, the more I felt like I was reading about myself.

Around the same time a very dear friend of mine and her son got diagnosed together, and she told me I needed to get diagnosed. Because we struggle with so many of the same things. And medication helped her not just organize and accomplish things, but actually feel better about herself.

Because it's easy to feel like a loser when you struggle to get much of anything done.

Shortly after this, I mentioned it in a call with my psychiatrist. I told him about Jordan and about how so many of the described cognitive struggles resonate with me. I said, "I think I have ADHD!"

And he said something along the lines of, "Everyone feels like they have ADHD in Covid." 

So I did nothing about it. Because everything was hard and I wasn't in a position to pay a bunch of money for a diagnosis for myself. Getting Jordan diagnosed felt critical, and truly, it's changed his life. 

But me? I am not in school. I no longer work in an office. I have some freelance projects, but mostly I'm home taking care of my mom and the kids.

It didn't feel as important to pursue.

Then this year, two years after that phone appointment with my shrink, I relayed the conversation to a friend who said, "His response was very dismissive!" 

She was right. I wish I'd had the presence of mind to say that to him.

And this year, after a break of about a decade, I got back into therapy. I brought it up with my therapist.

We had some in-depth conversations, and she offered to speak to my psychiatrist or doctor about a diagnosis and medication.

I told her about what my shrink had said, and how I didn't feel inclined to reach out to him. Instead I reached out to my PC to see if she was comfortable with diagnosis and ask if we might have an appointment to discuss this.

I used to have a doctor who didn't even pretend to know who I was whenever I went to see him, but in the past couple years I've been seeing someone I adore. I switched practices to follow her across town. She's so smart and thoughtful and I both like and respect her.

In 53 years on this planet, this for me is a first.

So these two amazing, bright, highly educated women had a conversation about me, about my mental health and the best approach to my care, and I just don't know if I've felt so cared for by health care  professionals before.

At my appointment with my PC we discussed options, and she suggested trying the short-acting form of Adderall to start with, to see how I reacted to it and if it helped.

Unlike antidepressants, where you titrate up over weeks and wait to see if you feel better, with Adderall you feel the effects almost immediately. 

This was a nice change. I'm so used to waiting and waiting to see how I feel, and trying to figure out if I actually feel better or just want to feel better so I think I do.

(It took me a long time to figure out that Wellbutrin made me angry. It didn't take away any of the darkness in my brain, but it filled every single nook and cranny of me with rage. Which super fucking sucks. To use an industry term.)

Anyway, Adderall.

I took it, and what I felt was calm. My brain, usually busy oh so busy, was quiet.

Honestly, and I know for most people this is weird, I don't listen to music when I'm home alone. My brain is already too noisy. No TV unless it's something I'm watching, and no music, unless I'm walking/running or driving.

When Nick has music on in the kitchen and also wants to talk to me it makes me feel physically angry. 

I'm not suggesting my big brain is always occupied processing such important things. No. It's that there are too many things happening at the same time, and multiple inputs on top of that make my head melt.

Adderall mitigated the swirly chaos of the constant everything.

I thought I was a great at multitasking, but as it turns out, I am not. 

What I've been good at, at least at work, is being pleasant about being interrupted in the middle of a task, because it's so easy to turn my attention to something else.

(You're not troubling me because I was going to get up anyway.)

This one is perhaps my favorite: You know what else people with ADHD struggle with? Time management.

You know what I suck at? Time.

I've had friends who get insulted if you are at all late, because they think it's a reflection of how you feel about them.

These are friends I can love dearly but not make plans with.

Because time. My god, I've been so challenged by the space-time continuum my entire life.

I remember sending Nick a calendar appointment—I think it was for my amnio when I was pregnant with Jordan—and he thought we needed to be there an hour and a half ahead of time. But really that was my time buffer because I was terrified of being late.

Nick, as it turns out, just walks through life tightly scheduling all kinds of important meetings and actually attending them without anxiety drama trauma.

Perhaps you do, too. I imagine this is nice. I don't mean this at all sarcastically. 

Anyway, reading about it and being like, oh, it's not just me failing to grasp the concept of clocks and hours and minutes and living in a linear fashion made me feel a hell of a lot better. 

It's my brain chemistry soup. And I am not alone in the struggle.

I don't mean to suggest that I've been a complete disaster for my over half a century on this planet. 

I've functioned as a reasonable human in society for quite some time now. I went to decent schools and got a graduate degree and held jobs and bought a condo and paid my bills on time.

But my gosh, I now realize things could've been easier. 

I remember feeling this way when I got on medication for depression. For so many years, things could've been easier. So much easier.

This is really the beginning of my journey with this, because I don't actually think Adderall is the right medication for me. 

Which I'm not concerned about, because I've tried so many antidepressants over the years, and I know medication is a Goldilocks kind of process.

I see that things can be different, and I'm happy about it.

But I've gone on too long, so that needs to be a whole nother post.