Anti-depressed

I know I’ve only been blogging for a few months, but as I go back and read my old blogs I think to myself “wow, they are really good! I can’t believe I wrote that. It doesn’t even seem like the same person.” I hope that these words do not make you think I am a narcissist (I may very well be, but not in this instance). I think that those first posts were like NASCAR, few people watch for the love of the sport, but rather it’s like waiting in anticipation for a bad crash. It’s amazing how misery inspires art.

Recently, with the help of my beautiful wife, I got a little bit of added assistance for my condition. This has come with a great deal of humility for me. Sitting down with Amanda and reviewing the symptoms for adult ADHD, I felt… honestly, I felt relieved. 

I spent the last 7-8 years denouncing such a diagnosis in myself, even denouncing the very existence of the disorder. I had been on medication as a teenager (12-17) and hated it. I hated the questions of “did you take your medicine?” when there were behavioral issues. I hated the thought that my behavioral problems could be dismissed as chemical imbalances’ when they were reactions to external factors. I stopped taking the medicine halfway through my senior year of High school. I do not regret that decision.

I set out to college with a mission to prove that there was nothing wrong with me. Well, that’s not why I went per se, but spite in this regard served as one of the motivating factors for my success.

These last few years have been especially difficult. Long periods of anxiety and days without sleep, followed by long periods of severe depression, bursts of irritation, and pushing people as far away from me as I could characterizes my recent memories (and characterizes the manifestation of this disorder in adults).

I still have a great tension within me… I haven’t fully thought through all of this. I still feel a great compromise in agreeing to go back on medication. I will say that I feel a great deal better than I did. I do, however, feel that it was my angst that drove me and made me a good writer/student. I struggle with things to write about now that my thoughts and feelings are no longer haunted and agonized. I’m like that song by Garbage:

 I'm only happy when it rains
I'm only happy when it's complicated
And though I know you can't appreciate it
I'm only happy when it rains

You know I love it when the news is bad
And why it feels so good to feel so sad
I'm only happy when it rains

Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me
Pour your misery down, pour your misery down on me

I'm only happy when it rains
I feel good when things are going wrong
I only listen to the sad, sad songs
I'm only happy when it rains

I only smile in the dark
My only comfort is the night gone black
I didn't accidentally tell you that
I'm only happy when it rains

You'll get the message by the time I'm through
When I complain about me and you
I'm only happy when it rains

Pour your misery down Pour your misery down
Pour your misery down on me Pour your misery down
Pour your misery down

You can keep me company
As long as you don't care

I am fully functional. I have the concentration of Buddhist cow, my emotions are regulated and in check, I can get my school work done in a timely manner, I can focus at work. I guess a part of me still misses the complications I suffered unnecessarily. I’m still figuring this out…

 I write this so that you, my brothers and sisters, may give more thought to the suspicion with which we oft times look at such things. We sometimes espouse ignorant postures of things that we are unable to sympathize with or understand, myself included.

I ask that you give consideration to this being that I am still in tension with it personally. I’d like to hear your thoughts, although be mindful that you are not talking about “ideology”, but my life.

Thank you