These are some things that I've been thinking about because of conversations lately.
I'm ADD. Seriously, for real, I'm ADD, although I'm not sure of the severity. I'll go through periods of normalcy where I'll think that it was just my imagination, but lately it's been acting up again. I'll be at work and the thought of calling people or typing out charts will literally panic me; I'll find myself having stared at the screen blankly for fifteen minutes before I realize that I blanked out. I have to go home and do something mindless to calm myself down both on my lunch break and in the evening, and I've been extremely snippy with my family. This isn't counting the past couple of crying jags I've gone on in the morning, which are very weird for me because, while I extravert feeling like a mother, I don't cry often, and when I do it's just a tear or two instead of the kind of crying that leaves you winded.
I feel guilty. I don't know what to do, because this job is very stressful in its unpredictability and disorganization, but I cannot quit because we need the money. I also have no idea if quitting would help, since other jobs would likely require me to focus as well. I can't go see a shrink and get evaluated, even though all the others I've seen have simply told me that I was too smart. That's great; I'll just go to work and tell them that I'm too fucking smart to type up this chart, so can they please just let me read a book instead? You have got to be kidding me. However, after barely graduating high school and then completely losing the ability to focus upon leaving the structure of the military, I am very, very sick of the inability to function in a normal work environment.
This leads me to the thought that, because I am so unfocused, I have been questioning the accuracy of information I have in my head lately. I remember telling people things that they say I didn't, and I don't remember other things that I apparently did say or take care of. Now, questioning myself is something I have always done, and my idea of the nature of reality is more fluid than that of most people, so I do not naturally accept the infallibility of my perceptions in the way that seems so natural to most people. What is normally a simple quirk of mine sometimes almost becomes crippling to me when I have my random bursts of attention deficit, since my lack of focus seems to confirm that I cannot, in fact, trust my memory. This leads me to panic out of fear that I really don't have a grasp on what is going on.
I think this problem is worse for me because I went through boot camp, and what would have normally been a simple honing of respect for authority for most people took a part of me that was already fragile from a previous abusive relationship and snapped it like a twig.
See, in abusive relationships, you are told that everything is your fault, and you eventually believe it. It's your fault that he raped you, or that he hit you, or that he called you whatever he called you. That's something I struggle with to this day - intellectually I am very much aware that I may not have been the perfect girlfriend, but that absolutely nothing I did merited that kind of treatment - and even then I'm only aware of that because I think it's insane when other women blame themselves for the same thing, so it extends to me. However, I still feel as though it was my fault, and with me the preference between thinking and feeling is blurry enough that I have a very difficult time with accepting the rational explanation. Maybe this would have gotten better with therapy, but I did not discuss what I had gone through with my parents until shortly before I graduated high school, and I went to boot camp less than a month later because, hey, that's the smart thing to do in that situation!
To explain the kind of breaking they do to you in boot camp I will offer you a scenario.
When you go through martial arts training you are required to wear a mouthguard. One day mine was lost and I had to go. I told my drill instructor, SSgt W, that I did not have my mouthguard and she probably punished me (I don't remember exactly) and then we went on to the training. I was still sans mouthguard. Well, we were in the middle of it and my senior drill instructor, SSgt F, saw me and asked me what the fuck I was doing in training without my mouthguard. I told her (in boot camp speak, which is too gramatically convoluted to give here) that I had told SSgt W that I had no mouthpiece.
"Hey, SSgt W, ma'am, c'mere."
"Yes, SSgt F?"
"Recruit F here says she told you she didn't have a mouthguard. That true?"
"No, SSgt F." She shot me a look that made it pretty clear that she was going to enjoy bringing me down. It took all the training I'd had so far not to give her a crazy look. Then it proceeded to go downhill.
"So, recruit, you lying to me?"
"No, ma'am."
"You calling SSgt W a liar, then?"
(Thinking: Yes, yes, she is, a dirty, sadistic liar.) "No, ma'am." (I valued my life.)
"Then you're a liar."
"This recruit is not a liar, ma'am."
"Then you're calling SSgt W a liar."
This exchange continued along the same tone for about fifteen minutes before I said yes, fine, I'm a goddamn liar so just punish me already.
Now, it's one thing whenever you know that it's not true, but consider three months of that - being told that you are lying when you are not, being told that basically up is down because authority says so. I can understand the utility of that training for combat purposes, even if I personally find it morally repugnant. However, where that might have taken your average person and made them simply more likely to follow orders and not make waves, it took me and twisted that already slightly bent part of me into something that is probably irreparable. Where I started out simply prone to questioning myself, a cruel boy turned that on me to convince me of my culpability in his abuse, and boot camp took it further to make me more prone to question whether or not I ever have accurate perceptions, period. What is everything really was my fault? What if I was actually lying and didn't know it, and there was this part of me tucked away that made bad things happen? What if it still is that way?
Combining that with the fact that I work in an extremely disorganized place with several unreliable people who may or may not remember what I tell them (and that I am extremely disorganized and increasingly unable to remember what I have and have not told people), and that the blame ultimately falls to me if things are forgotten, and that might explain my panic. I just really do not know up from down here lately because it's been in such chaos, and it probably sounds silly, but I would rather go to a day in boot camp again than go to work most days here lately. I need structure in my life and about the only structure here is that I come here. I'm afraid to go to work in the morning because, even though there is no risk to me here, there are feelings that simulate the anxiety I felt in the two preceding situations.
I've looked up PTSD and wonder sometimes if, perhaps, I have symptoms of that that masquerade as ADD. I probably should get therapy, but I can't afford it. Normally I'm fine and functional, but I'm turning into a nervous wreck and I would really love some kind of resolution to this, and I'm starting to realize that this cycle isn't going to stop until I actually get into some kind of therapy that addresses the abuse I went through. It bothers me because I feel as though I should be intelligent enough to be able to rationalize my way out of this, but I'm not. If I'm so damn smart then why can't I just be over it already? I mean, this all happened to me between nine and seven years ago; why can't I just get over it?
And there are two rational halves battling this one - the half that says that I should know better than this since I know what's going on, and the half that says that a) every survivor responds differently and I count and b) a great deal of survivors go through this process, too, and I am not an exception to these things. Pair that with the emotional side of me that is just a wreck right now. It's a conflict. I'd like to resolve it, but I have no idea how at this point.
So I'm at an impasse, because I am very tired of this. I'd just like to function like a normal person - not to be a normal person, since I am not one and have never wanted that, but to be able to be so to the degree that I can actually perform normal, everyday tasks.
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