Just a mishmash

Part 1: On human suffering

I've been thinking a lot lately about the origins of our behaviour both on an individual and on a societal level, said thoughts originating with an email a friend sent me in a reply to my discussing the situation with Eddie that parsed out a lot of what she's observed over the past few years and where those things led to these problems, including with my parents. Now, where, with most other people, I would have construed this to be telling me where to direct the *blame*, with her, I immediately told myself to chillax and turned off the auto-rage button, because she wasn't blaming anyone so much as simply letting me know what patterns she's seen in my life - and, when you've known someone for as long as she's known me, you just get to say that kind of shit, period, because you just might have insights, and she did.

Anyhow, this got me thinking about how I'm a damaged person, by which I mean, I'm a person. We're all damaged in different areas, although you will tend to find similarities within cultures and subgroups. So, where the areas that I'm damaged cause me to behave a certain way (and with a certain degree of agency once I am aware of those root causes), the areas where other people are damaged may cause them to, say, become President and invade a country without an exit strategy to prove they're as big a man as Daddy, or to kill a transwoman who was a sexual partner for causing them to continue questioning their sexuality.

We are all damaged people, and all act on it differently and, while some things are unforgivable on a level and absolutely deserve punishment, by the same token, we must look on all creatures with compassion - even the people who commit these heinous crimes. It is this ability that makes us able to see problems and pull them out by the roots. It is this ability that will heal humanity, ultimately, if we ever get that far, and I have my doubts.

That doesn't mean that I'm good at that, or that I probably ever will be - I am too quick to anger to be able to easily step back and view things with that detachment; however, I know that, whenever I look at George W. Bush, I see a man who, as a child, struggled with undiagnosed learning disorders, wanted attention from his parents that he never got, lost a sister unexpectedly without ever having this addressed, and, ultimately, just wanted to be like his daddy. Whenever I look at Allen Andrade, I see a man who was probably told all of his life that homosexuality was an abomination and who struggled with his own sexuality until he could not forgive a transwoman for making him see himself as gay. I see two victims of homophobia in the murder of Angie Zapata - because transphobia is tied up very heavily with homophobia, although they are two different things.

And, as I look around me, I see damaged people, behaving in ways that convey to a smaller degree that they are damaged. I do the same thing. I am trying to work on viewing other people's behaviour through the lens of, "Why is that guy being such an asshole," rather than, "Man, that guy is an asshole, and someone should let him know," and, with my hairtrigger temper, it's not easy. It doesn't let people off the hook for their behaviour, but it allows us to have both the solace of knowing that there are reasons for behaviours as well as letting us actually work constructively with other people if we feel the need to address them.

We need to look at underlying causes, and, wherever we go, we need to minimize our own contribution to those causes - especially with our children - and we need to point out those causes where we can so that there can be awareness. It's part of why the death penalty is an unacceptable method of punishment - it simply punishes without any care for the underlying causes of the crimes and how they can be addressed on a societal level. We need to look at things meta. We need to grow.

Part 2 - On mental health

I think part of the reason I'm willing to seek professional help for actual ADHD as opposed to my previous mindset of "Gods why am I so stupid that I can't make my head work" is because I actually have decent self-esteem at this point. I've kind of moved on from thinking that there is something intrinsically wrong with me that must be my fault, to acknowledging that there are parts of my chemical makeup that I have no control over (although my response to said stimuli are, to a degree, controllable, but only to a degree) and that it isn't just that I suck. I think there's a correlation between self-esteem and the willingness to cede control that isn't addressed enough (at least, in things I've read, but I'm not exactly college-educated or anything). I don't particularly care about controlling other people - seriously, what a waste of time! - but controlling myself, my internal reactions, my visible interactions, is very important to me. This isn't necessarily because of image control (I will never be normal and don't particularly care what people think of me if they expect it) so much as because I feel rather stupid whenever I am not able to exert the self-control to present the reaction I prefer. Considering that I have these neurons misfiring all over my head, this has led to a lot of agony over not being able to just wash the goddamn dishes right now, or what have you. I mean, everyone else can manage this; why is it so fucking hard for me to just do simple tasks? (I phrase this strongly not because I am particularly upset right now, but because this is how much it pisses me off whenever I cannot impress my dopamine receptors to the point of viewing those tasks as anything less than Chinese water torture.)

I've been thinking about this because of being in therapy lately, but also because for the past couple of weeks, frankly, the ADHD has pushed me to just-barely-functional. (Oddly enough, the worse the ADHD is, the more articulate I am whenever I'm able to communicate. Figure that one out.) I'm able, at least, to look at myself objectively to the degree in which I can see that, where yes, I have a choice, that choice is seriously stacked in a way that does not exist for people who are neurotypical (and, while I am not autistic, there are similar underlying causes in this family of problems). I live most of my life with a rather irritating free-floating anxiety that I have something I need to do that I have not gotten done yet - the only thing is, it's not an OCD impulse; it's connected to concrete tasks that I both feel guilty for not accomplishing and feel an almost overpowering aversion to accomplishing. However, at this point, rather than simply slamming my...head into this wall (I am purposefully omitting the usage of my preferred metaphor, which is rather more colorful), I am willing to say that this is something that is, for the most part, out of my control, is not my fault, and is something that I need to seek help for. That's liberating. It means that I'm not stupid, and I'm not just randomly deciding to suck. My brain, which is so great in some areas, also just refuses to function in other normal areas. That's part of why I have a healthy sense of self-deprecation - sure, I have perfect pitch, can win almost any (written) argument, and have a lot of other skills, but, people, I can't do my own damn dishes nine days out of ten (not necessarily consecutive). Let's keep this in perspective, shall we?

I wonder what I could have accomplished if I didn't have this problem, or if this problem had been addressed earlier. I think the only thing that really bothers me is that it's helped me piss away most of my musical skill - I went from, as a freshman, being told that I could make Julliard if I continued on my trajectory musically and got my damn grades up, to barely playing grade in the military because practicing my instrument is like psychological torture. Otherwise, I mean, I have a pretty good life that I'm working on making better, so it's all good, but I wonder what I could have been musically, because I don't think I'm ever getting that back.

Maybe I have other lessons I was supposed to learn and teach, though. Things happen the way they were supposed to happen, in the end. I just kind of, sometimes, feel robbed by this thing.

Part 3 - On periods, yes, the kind with blood, and self-perception

I have never, ever, ever had a regular cycle in my life. Not naturally. Not on hormonal contraception. I have an IUD right now, which is as errorproof as anything invented by any human being is capable of being and, while very effective in the birth control department, still cannot manage to make my rebellious reproductive system behave. As a result, I don't have a sense of how hormones affect me the way that most other women seem to - I can't tell you PMS from ovulation from anything else, because I never know if it's going to be three weeks or three months (and that makes for extra fun early pregnancies, like my first, where I didn't know until three months along!). I don't know that this has so much affected me on a conscious level (it's just mainly a really huge irritation because I literally never know when it's coming, and any time a doctor asks me, "Last period?" I can't answer because I really don't know), but chemically it could be important in the sense that I have no idea how my cycle affects me physically where most other people do. I tend to be moody, but I don't know if that is cyclical because I have no sense of connection to my "cycle". My ADHD comes and goes in bouts, some worse than others, and, where usually I'm in at least a mild state of chaos, I'll go through periods of focus lucidity, and I can't connect any of this to my cycle because I don't frakking have one.

This is really irritating, and, while it's not a medical "problem," it probably has some impact on my ability to actually deal with problems of this sort.

Part 3: On why this is all about me

I'm the only one I can talk about authoritatively right now, and even that's questionable. I care about lots of stuff, I promise, but right now I just felt like sharing this random stuff.