twilightrabbit

I’m on a new medication for my recent diagnosis of all the ADHD. I have hit all nine markers in each type of ADHD for a total of 18. I am officially someone who is ADHD combined type presenting. My hubby said it’s not Pokémon; I didn’t have to catch them all.
The meds I’m on is off brand Effexor for those curious. It’s normally prescribed for those with anxiety, but Venlafaxine has been shown in triple blind studies to be effective for those with ADHD, PTSD, and OCD. Being on it, I think I now have a glimpse of what it’s like to be neurotypical. I mean, I’m still not, but I can focus and holy heck do the majority of you have it easy. I can’t even begin to tell you what it’s like in my mind. I mean, I could tell I was thinking differently than the majority of people around me, and when people would ask me what I was thinking about, it was usually something weird in comparison; but now I’m getting to the nitty gritty of just how different brains work.
I have an internal monologue. I know people who don’t have an internal monologue at all; so let me try and explain it to you. It’s a first person narration of my life that while not audible is ever present and very much a part of my reality, it is my inner voice. But my voice is constantly interrupting itself with other ideas and is constantly trying to find relation between disparagingly divergent topics. It’s like I have no cognitive filter with my own thoughts.
A person may have a singular stream of consciousness. I have a tangle of consciousness that I’m trying to unknot as more threads are spewed in tandem with every new piece of information. When this works well, I can come up with brilliant strategies and short cuts for living.
But when it doesn’t work, I find basic tasks impossible to complete because of the brain knots.
But now I’m on these meds and I’m able to remain engaged in conversation without interrupting or throwing the topic out the window. I’m able to focus and it’s crazy how, I’m guessing, a normal person can just do that with no effort. You have no idea how easy you’ve got it.
And when reading, it would take me three to five times as long as a normal person. My no inner monologue peeps are on the other end and read faster than normal people with zero interference; so I’m not comparing myself to these speed readers. I’m just talking the mean, I’m much slower than the mean.
But if asked to read in class, I could read at what I would call a performance pace. I wouldn’t speed read, but the pace I would read at I could convey the emotion of the excerpt. I didn’t stumble.
But when I read to myself silently, that’s when I’m really slow. I become distracted and I’ll realize I may be further down the page suddenly without it really “clicking” what’s been happening in the plot. The words I reread are familiar, but because of something else my inner monologue wandered onto, I may have to reread several paragraphs per page just to stay in the book’s covers. The words are read, understood, but the context is not registered. It’s very frustrating. And I haven’t read a book all the way through in several years.
I’m excited to give it a try again and see if I can get back into reading. Maybe get into reading in a way I never was before. I read above my grade level for years, and then became bored with books for awhile because reading was frustrating and the plots seemed unimaginative. Now I have a pile of titles I want to go through by authors I didn’t know existed when I was younger. I grew up without today’s internet and in Quebec, so the selection of English authors was understandably small. There was one bookshelf in my English high school library of English authors until I moved to Ontario. By that time, I’d fallen out of the reading habit.
I hope to write more now that the meds are making it easier to write, also. Maybe pick up this blog again. Just some news that you might find interesting, so I’ve put it out there. If you think you have ADHD, don’t self medicate. If it’s negatively affecting your life, talk to your doctor and see what help is available for you. I was assessed after I lost my dream job, and I’m horrified to discover just how much it’s negatively affected me my whole life, but only this instance finally helped me get the information I needed moving forward.
Best of luck to all of you out there. Bear in mind next time you argue with someone who takes a long time at a task, they may be legitimately struggling. The brain is an impressive computer, and mine is glitched the heck out.

I had run ins with two horrible men today. Please help me define assault. It’s apparently a guessing game.

First scenario. It’s freezing rain. I’m at a bus stop. No smoking signs everywhere. Buddy in a hoodie enters bus shelter opposite end to me and keeps his hood up, earbuds in, music up, facing wall and floor so as to ignore me. Is smoking a cigarette.

I ask if he’s smoking cause I can smell it through my N95 mask. He ignores me (I don’t know about the earbuds at this time, and he isn’t facing me). I approach and I have to touch his shoulder to get him to look at me. I’m like you’re smoking in the bus shelter. He gives me a blank look,” And.” It’s no smoking I tap the glass with one of the several no smoking signs on it, “So.”

Everything about what he’s done and how he’s done it has told me he knows what he’s doing. So I drop the f bomb. He says, “Excuse me?” I drop the f bomb again. He says, “That’s assault.”

So, no, the guy who brought a carcinogen into a bus shelter against by-law is claiming I’ve assaulted him. That my touching him and cussing at him is assault.

We board the bus. I tell the bus driver about him. He tells the bus driver about me. End result. The bus driver tells him he’s not supposed to do that. The bus driver tells me it’s okay he’s talked to him. I feel like the smoker won this one. I didn’t want him let on board. Let him smoke in the iXpress bus shelter for ten minutes while he waits for the next bus. I don’t escalate things on the bus. Oh, but I want to. But I don’t.

Let’s move on to scenario two.

Concert tonight with family. The couple sitting behind me are friends with the venue’s manager and they are obnoxious to the nth degree. They slosh beer on my mom’s coat. They talk the whole show. The woman talks the most. Sometimes they’re funny. They are definitely sloshed. But the thing they do before the encore starts takes the cake. Or rather, what the guy did.

We were standing, cheering for the encore. We went to sit back down. I feel something come down hard on the back of my head. I thought I might have been punched. I look around for the source saying something hit me in the head. I don’t want it to happen again so I’m looking.
The guy behind me leans in, and I can’t believe what he just said; so I say excuse me, and he repeats himself exactly; as though I didn’t hear his audacity,
“I think you got it worse than it got me.” He’s grinning ear to ear. We clonked noggins and he’s feeling no pain. Drunken headbutt.
So I’m like are you kidding me, but I don’t recall what I actually said. But he calls it a mutual accident. Get over it.
He claims our heads must have connected when I leaned my head back. And I say of my chair, “it’s not a recliner.”
He replies, “oh grow up.” to the back of my seat.
I’m in pain, being gaslit, and belittled; so I turn now in my seat and tell him to his face he’s been obnoxious the entire show.
And he’s like sit down, relax, and enjoy the show.

I sit down, I can’t relax, and I can’t enjoy the encore. I’m in pain. But I don’t cause a scene.

The best humanity has to offer is not these two men, I can tell you that.
What I can tell you is I’m living a wonderful life in comparison to these two. I don’t have to smoke and try to hide it or get wet in the freezing rain, or get drunk to enjoy a concert. Tomorrow, they still have to live with themselves.

Me, I still have my wonderful family and friends I take comfort in. Their company is what I enjoy, that’s why I surround myself with them.

Wish me luck sleeping tonight. I might have a concussion from the rowdy audience goer.

I don’t usually take the garbage out to the bins. But tonight I did. And there he was. A baby rat between me and the bins. Exhausted, barely able to move.

I brought him inside in a towel in a portable carrier for rodents, then I set up a proper cage with bedding, water, and a food dish. He’s too exhausted to even eat.

We have coyotes in our backyards roaming the neighborhood. I couldn’t leave him outside on the concrete.

We can’t keep him. If anyone is up to the task, free rat? Otherwise when he’s able to move briskly again, we’re releasing him back into the wild.

Note: he might have diseases. He’s under my observation for now. So far I think he’s just exhausted. The lack of appetite has me concerned however.

I got really heated by some arrogant logical fallacy sobs on Facebook who make asinine comments, and I think imma take a well deserved FB breather for a week, at least.
The fallacy was, “asking people to wear masks equals fascism”. I can’t even with these conspiracy nuts. So break time.
So... how’ve you been?

We have a cleaning service show up, but they only do surfaces. Tonight and tomorrow I have to make sure we're ready for their arrival. Or they can't dust and vacuum. So yea, it's silly, but I have to clean up for the cleaners.

I currently have my guinea pig on my shoulder. She's once again stuck her rump against my neck so it's difficult for me to keep my head straight.
The cat has taken off to the basement. She woke herself up early and it was almost as hysterical as last night when she did it.

I brought some bricks to my local Lego Artist today. She's working on tangible builds for the blind. It's the opposite of what most AFOLs (adult fan of Lego) build. Normally there are visually stimulating builds that are fragile/intricate with signs that say "DO NOT TOUCH". But she's building now based on texture and colour has little meaning and they're being built sturdy so they can be touched.

We also watched the Lego Brickumentary together. I'd never seen it before. It brought up something interesting
and it got me thinking. Mentioned in the documentary was a project being worked on by a rather young stop-motion film-maker choosing Lego brick as his medium. Neither of us was surprised that only three years ago he had given up on the project saying it was too hard and time-consuming and was now pursuing other interests. We were partially thinking that would be the case because of his age. The other reason I don't think either of us was surprised was due to how ambitious the project was and because also because it was a film project. Most film projects that are begun are abandoned due to one reason or other.

So I'm doing laundry tonight and chilling with a rodent. Diet and exercise continue to go well. I hope I can hit the gym with the Lego Artist in future. But I'm currently working towards my exercises lasting for longer than ten minutes first. When I'm back up to an hour, then a visit to an offsite gym will be worth it. At least I have a treadmill at home.

Back to work tomorrow. It's been a nice long weekend for me. I'm looking forward to getting back to my dream job.