Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD or Hell on Earth)
July 31st, 2023
"You're back is really stiff!"
I don't know how many times I've heard that in my life from friends and family giving me a massage. I always attributed it to stress, which made sense in a way.
(*I am in fact a very stressful individual, I'm sure if you take a look at the good ol' diary in the past pages, that much would be obvious.)
But I never gave it much thought past that. At least until I stayed with my cousins on my mom's side. They're range from about four to nine winters. They're a rowdy bunch, you could say they have a lot of hyper energy. More than anything I'd ever seen before.
In my teenage years, I was a K-12 tutor. I had taught kids math at one of those bougie tutoring centers where overly anxious moms and stressed out parents send they're kiddos. The high schoolers were rough but rational, but the kindergarteners. Haha. They're quite a bunch of kids who can't control themselves. But I never lost my patience with them. They'd bounce in their seats but once you gave them enough focus, they would sit down and do the pre-planned assignments.
My cousins... are a little different.
When I say bounce, I mean they bounce non-stop. It's difficult to imagine honestly, but once you experience being with an ADHD kid you might understand why they get medicated. Bouncing around non-stop, an inability to listen and remember what you tell them, and worst of all, in the boys, extremely violent reactions to not getting their way.
I mean, my six year old cousin threatened to kill me because he was upset. Of course, he's not going to kill me, I'm much too big, but it was alarming to hear him say that. And before you say that, no, their parents had never taught them that ever. It was as if he were born a little different.
Now, I'm a soft-spoken, milquetoast, run-of-the-mill, and diffident male specimen. I don't assert myself that often because I have poor emotional control. These kids... test my patience.
How? Now loud noises, screaming, running around, all that doesn't bother me too much. And I think those kids could tell. It's when they decided to up it a notch. They would pull my hair, smack my face, clap my ears, and kick my shins. They'd jump knees first straight into my stomach when I'm chilling on the couch. But I politely would tell them to stop.
But today I screamed at them. Badly. They were scared shitless.
I have to work on being more assertive with people. Not only with kids, but with adults too. I have a problem for going overboard and exploding.
The Point I'm Making
But that story is besides the point. How this comes back to me? Well. When I was younger, I did the same thing~! I totally forgot about it until I saw these kiddos running around and pulling hair.
When I was younger, I'd do those same thing and pull hair. I'd kick shins and smack people's faces. I grew up into a fine young man (okay, maybe a little messed up,) but I hadn't thought twice about my behaviour as a child. I'd only focus at how unfair and mean my mother would treat me.
But wallah! Here I am. The cycle of life. I see the kids running and screaming like that, I can feel my blood boil. Just as my mom's blood boiled until she threatened to kill me.
And I realized... I was wanting to smack the hell out of those kids just like my mother did.
And as my tenure as a high school math tutor... most kids do not act like that. Which made me realize that something was up. My uncle let me know that one of them is diagnosed with ADHD.
It's in the blood. On my mom's side.
Tying it Up
My father's side runs with a significant amount of Asperger's syndrome. Though only a handful are diagnosed, I reckon about 90% of the males on my dad side display signs of being on the spectrum (I'm not even exagerating...).
And now... I learn on my mother's side that ADHD coarses through our bloods. It's quite often they are co-morbid together too, something like 50%.
What does that mean for me? Well, in all likelihood, I probably had ADHD. And I presumed for the past few months I had Asperger's Syndrome.
That explains why I'm so different from all of my peers honestly.
Weirdness, Selfishness, and Being a Bad Person
I try really hard to be a "good person." But obviously I fall short, otherwise I wouldn't be ranting away at this blog.
For some reason, I just don't know what to do at times. Like comforting people. Or being overwhelmed by the amount of work.
I really don't want to think of my personality as a disability, but honestly it feels like it at times.
I'm really curious to get diagnosed honestly. Because maybe I'm making shit up. I'm pretty sure I can read people pretty well and like, that's all good.
Like I can tell by people's voices how they're feeling at any given time, so it really helps.
I don't know. It's my struggle dealing with my own personal quirks.
Ego Death
Quite possibly, the saddest realization today is how autistic I realized I looked. I recorded myself for a job interview and watched the recording.
When I say some words, I'll jerk my head forward like in a really nerdy way. And my head bobs and my shakey voice. It all comes off as... so uncertain. It comes off as genuine, but I can see why people are weirded out by me.
And it makes me sad. Very sad.
Is my behaviour the result of my life choices? Are these weird articulation patterns the result of my failure as an individual to be the best I could be? Why do I move my lips so much when I speak? Why do I look like I struggle to speak?
I'm twenty-three years old. A grown man. And here I am, struggling with speaking like a child. Do you know how that makes me feel?
I feel hopelessly tossed and tussled by the Furies of Fate. I'm crawling against their whips...
I feel as if I am simultaneously a failure and someone tussled unfairly by the world around me. It is both my fault and the world around me of such that I am a failure of all my life experiences.
I... want to die in a way. I feel hopeless. Killed. Death. Ego. Gone. I think no more. I have no memory. I have no regrets, it is all too painful. So I fail to even recognize the successes or the failures. I feel nothing because I am a coward of my own emotions.
Cowardice
It's the truth; I hate myself. I still do. My emotional current still dries and undulates as much as it can, but it drags me undercurrent with a soft swell and sweat. It polishes my depressed corpse until I am simply... alone.
I tell myself I'll change. I tell myself I'll feel better about myself if I do this and that. And I do this and that. And I feel better. And I believe in it. All the more merry. I truly believe in it.
Until the soft swell rises like the seasons. And back into the drowning current I go.
Old habits die hard, or rather, old experiences kill us from the inside.
How can I ever mentally recover from this pit of insanity? Is it even possible, with all that negativity rotting me from the inside?
