Have you been wondering why I haven’t written anything in a few weeks? The truth is, I have written a few things, I just haven’t published them. I guess the frame of mind I’ve been in has been keeping me from thinking that it even matters. That’s not the best place to be in. I’m finally deciding to publish something today! Below you will find something I wrote on August 12, 2016…

I’m pretty sure I’ve been fighting some depression. I can’t believe I’ve gone a couple of weeks without writing anything here. Truthfully, I have written a few things… but I just didn’t feel like publishing them. I’m not completely sure why. I suppose that due to being in a hard place I just didn’t feel like putting any of myself “out there”.

Here’s one issue I have… I seem to be more motivated to do things for others rather than myself. Therefore, if I look at writing my blog as something for me… then it’s going to be hard sometimes to follow through. I know it’s one of the things I feel deep inside that I’m supposed to be doing… but sometimes I deny myself things.

The depression is a result of many things. Most of all, it’s the result of me feeling sorry for myself. It’s a result of losing my focus of looking outward and searching for the good in all things. I guess I’ve just felt bogged down mentally and physically. There are some specific things that have been on my mind…

I  know that every human on this earth faces personal struggles. I am no exception to that and I shouldn’t be. Every once in awhile I just let them all stack up one on top of another.

Why can it become so easy to focus on our flaws or struggles? There’s part of me that realizes this can be good because you can’t improve on something unless you recognize there’s a problem. But when does it become a flaw that isn’t really a flaw but rather just part of who you are? So much comes from the flaws and struggles depending on how we approach them. Sometimes I just want to smack them away… but sometimes I can see so clearly what a blessing they are.

What are some of my struggles that I haven’t even shared here or at least have shared very little?

How about adult ADHD? Not that I think I suddenly contracted that when I became an adult, it’s pretty obvious to me that it’s always been there. I remember being in elementary school and struggling with reading comprehension. I didn’t have any difficulty reading. It was a matter of content and if I found it interesting enough for my brain to grab onto it. My bedroom was always a mess. My mom used to say I was the slowest eater… even when I was a breastfeeding baby. I’d eat a little and then look around, then eat a little, then look around, on and on. I didn’t want to miss anything that was going on around me. I was distracted and fascinated by my environment.

Given the chaotic upbringing that I had, I received my diagnosis in my early 20’s after being treated for anxiety and depression. I know there are people that would like to shrug off ADHD/ADD as a made up disorder or that would say there is a lot of over-diagnosing of this disorder. My response to that is that it is real. It’s hard to know it’s real if you don’t personally experience it or have a close relationship with  someone who does.

Here’s a peek into my inattentive ADHD brain…

My home is a constant mess. This is one of the biggest struggles I have had to face on a daily basis. I have beat myself over the head repeatedly for having a messy unorganized home. Here’s the problem. There are a million more interesting things that I’m daydreaming about. I can think of so many different ways that something should be organized that I can never pick the one that would be the most beneficial. For this reason, things end up not really having a place that they belong. When I use something, I’m not sure if I’m really done using it, so it ends up getting left right where I used it last. If things are out of sight, then they are out of mind and I forget I have them or where they are. I have a hard time wrapping my head around things like folding laundry and putting it away. When I think about it, it seems like such a waste of time. I’m just going to wear it and it’s going to have to go through the wash again and then I’ll have to fold it again and put it away. It’s so much easier to just throw the clean clothes in a basket and grab what I need from there… no time wasted on that folding and going up and down the stairs to put it away. Most of the time I’m not even really that aware of the mess around me until someone says they are going to come over to visit. It’s like a person putting on glasses for the first time and they suddenly see crystal clear. In an instant I can see every little piece of everything and I freak out internally about what other people are going to think.

I’m highly creative and always wanting to try something new. I see something I like and I instantly want to try and make it myself. I’m almost always up for the challenge. I’ll impulsively purchase supplies and tools that I need to try a new craft or skill and then never even touch the bag sometimes until a year or two later. This is also why I can’t get rid of stuff. I’m seriously always going to work on that tomorrow. With so many ideas drifting in my head it is difficult to make a decision about what I’m going to do on any given day. There’s a war going on inside my brain between spending my time doing something that I think society thinks I should be doing as my role as a stay at home mom and what I feel passionate about doing. Even within those individual realms it’s difficult for me to make a choice about which thing to take on because there are so many options. Within those options I can rate the importance of them in so many different ways. There’s never a clear order to things… just constant ideas about how to rearrange them. There are so many ways to determine what is the priority. Do I use logic? If so, I still can’t decide because logically I can see the answer differently as I look from different angles. Are you keeping track of the layers of the thinking that goes into just deciding if I should do the dishes or go work on laundry?

Even within something like writing my blog… there are so many ideas swirling about.

Another element is boredom. I can totally get into learning something new and quickly become good at doing it… but then the newness starts to wear off and I see something else shiny catching my eye. Now I want to try the new thing. Sticking to a decision longterm feels impossible. If I don’t have a level of accountability to someone then I end up dropping things very easily. There’s so much information that I want to consume that I end up trying to consume many different things at the same time. I can have a pile of 5 books that I’m currently reading and never get completely through any of them. My focus dies too quickly or I get confused about where I should put my focus.

I have this hyper sensitivity to wanting to do the right thing or make the right choice. It’s a difficult combo when you can see so many right ways. It becomes debilitating at times and I just end up paralyzed. I spend so much time trying to decide what to do that I rarely complete any task from start to finish… or I rarely do it on a consistent basis. I can focus in on one thing and do really good at it for awhile, but as soon as I try and add in a new thing to focus on, I end up dropping the ball of the other thing I just mastered.

All of this is frustrating in and of itself if the only two things I had to think about were keeping my house in order and doing things I feel creatively passionate about. Can you imagine what it becomes when you factor in caring for five sons and a husband? What about the element of my health? Let’s chit chat about diabetes for a moment.

Type 1 diabetes is a disease where you have to constantly think about food. What’s in it? How many carbs does it have? How will those particular carbs get absorbed into my body? What will happen to those carbs if I do physical activity? How will my body react to any of a zillion different foods I put in my body depending on my menstrual cycle or stress level? What about the temperature outside? What about the exercise I did two days ago… how is that going to affect my blood sugar today? What if I’m sleep deprived? My CGM (continuous glucose monitor) goes off three times in the night waking me up and I have to eat sugar and make sure my level goes back up before I go back to sleep. Why did that happen? What do I need to change? Did I eat the wrong kind of carbs at the end of the day? Did I eat too many carbs or not enough? Does my insulin dosage during the night need to be changed? There are ENDLESS scenarios when trying to maintain blood glucose levels manually instead of your own body’s pancreas doing it automatically for you. Keep in mind, if you screw up… if you accidentally give yourself too much insulin or you forget to eat at a specific time you could go into a coma and die. That’s not an exaggeration.

Somehow in all this chaos going on in my brain… there’s another aspect of being hyper aware of other people. Their feelings, situations, remembering certain things about them. A certain person being triggered in my brain because of something I see that connects to something I remember them saying, or posting on social media, or something they like, or something they are interested in, or something they are going through, etc. Thoughts telling me to do something for other people. Thoughts saying I need to serve them. Thoughts telling me that I’m capable of helping with something and I should drop everything else.

The thoughts are exhausting. It’s constant confusion. There’s no order. It’s a big jumbled mess of awesomeness. I know I am capable of achieving incredible things… which makes it that much more frustrating to be stuck in confusion. There are specific parts of our brain that are supposed to guide us and help us navigate all of the tasks and options… those parts of my brain suck. The other parts of my brain are amazing.

There are obviously some things that I have been able to prioritize and follow through on. As a mom, I make sure my kids have food to eat, I make sure they get to school on time, I make sure they have clothes, etc. As a diabetic, I have to know what food I’m putting in my body and do calculations and know how much insulin to give myself, etc. These things that I have learned to prioritize, take a lot of energy for me to stay focused on, and keep at the front of my awareness. Sometimes I reach a point where I feel like I can’t keep doing it. I begin to lose my grip on forcing myself to pay attention. I’m so fatigued that I feel like I just need to come up for air. I need to focus on not focusing on anything. That’s when I’m in jeopardy of crashing… I start flailing around not grabbing onto anything and I become totally disoriented. Those are the moments I want to just get in the car and drive forever as if I can get away from myself.

Other things weighing on me… my responsibilities as a youth leader, dealing with the endless boxes of my mom’s things that have been sitting there for over a year now, being the only connection to any family that my older brother has now that our mom is gone, filling the void for my mom’s best friend who had a stroke several months before my mom passed away who has no close family… the list is endless. Some days I can let it go and some days I can’t.