Climbing the Walls

My Life with a Broke Brain

A couple of years ago, a friend observed me standing in my driveway. In one arm I was scoop-carrying a tangle of roller skates and pads. Dangling from arm number two? One humongous blue IKEA bag, capable of toting, say, two elephants.

It was empty.

I had mentioned previously to this friend that another friend suggested I have ADHD. She pointed at the empty bag, then the pile of crap. “I’m not a professional,” she said, “but that right there is a pretty solid sign.”

I messaged a sister and asked her opinion. She replied that she didn’t mean to hurt my feelings, but was this really the first time I’d ever considered it? Because she was pretty sure all nine of us adult kids have ADHD. I explained I had spent the past thirty years in therapy so focused on my anxiety, depression and PTSD that it never occured to me to consider I had even more mental health issues.

Oh joy.

My mental health care provider offered meds. I declined. I was already on antidepressants and besides, at least when it comes to work, my ADHD manifests as hyper-focus, not perpetual distraction. And while it's true I am grateful for medical intervention when necessary, I’m also a fan of not overdoing it when it comes to using my body as a beaker.

People-anxiety has always been a huge problem for me, one I overcompensated for madly. Used to be I could, inside of a week, be a party guest, a show emcee, a stage performer, and a dinner hostess and you would come away from interacting with me probably not thinking, “Whoa! Dude! It is fucked up in her head.” No, you would think, “Wow, she was really nice.” Probably, you would also think, “Damn, she sure can talk a blue streak.”

This is because I have adapted. Had adapted. But staying home for 2.5 years has atrophied my get up and go and also my interaction skills. The mere thought of being around strangers greatly accelerates my blood pressure. 

Nonetheless, I went to town yesterday. I have a young friend visiting and I wanted to show her Austin. We began thrifting north of the river. This was a great start, because those are the sorts of shops where I often find myself in the company of other Gen Xers and we recognize our club membership based on punk rock t-shirts and massive quantities of body art. 

Times my anxiety peaked, I engaged in a little game where I stopped myself and tried to label its sources. Nearly always these things are contingent on how I am convinced I am going to let someone else down.

Example: My first AirBnB guest arrived the other day. He’s still here, I think. But other than greeting him, I haven’t seen him at all. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking he was going to call and rip me a new asshole about some perceived flaw in his accommodations. I saw then, that he wasn’t the real issue. The real issue is that in February a bride showed up and was such a five star cunt that I remain rattled nearly eight months later. 

I dug deeper. What made me so angry about that bride and her planner was that, upset with things beyond my control—for starters it was thirty degrees out and a pipe froze and burst—they acted as if I had set out to sabotage them. Really, the bride was upset that she was stupid enough to plan an outdoor wedding in February, but she chose to deal with her anxiety by insulting me and my property, which I have now toiled seven full years to make beautiful. So horrendous was their behavior that I literally shut down my business. No more weddings. No more strangers on the property. Because maintaining my mental health is my priority, not some Pinterest-drunk thirty-year-old whose groom is going to divorce her ass in five years.

Reality set in though. Last year’s windfall has been spent as have the emergency business loans from early pandemic. It’s time to work again. I’m fine with this in principle. Stepping back into work mode is bringing its own stress though. I know when I have guests that I will worry about them. Less about their well-being and more about who will complain about what and how fast will I be able to shut them up and will I be able to accomplish this without absolutely losing my shit? 

I’m not sure. 

I also allowed myself the luxury of oscillating over to scenarios in which the dogs were suffering mightily in my absence. This despite two protracted informal studies conducted over nearly thirty years worth of living with dozens of dogs. Study one has indicated that there have been countless days pre-pandemic when I left them alone for eight hours at a time and they did just fine. Study number two clearly illustrates that dogs sleep about 23.75 hours per day. Even now, as I type this, they are all five piled around me on the bed, in the middle of their first naps, which commenced roughly ten minutes after they awakened for the day.

I know, intellectually, the dogs are fine. I know, worst case scenario, if AirBnB becomes too nerve wracking for me, I can shut the whole thing down literally with a few keystrokes,

So I dig deeper. I really, really, want to get to the root. I already know the deepest root is one I will never, ever, ever be able to fully dislodge. This is the root of the Wicked Father. The older I get, the thinner the veil becomes between the truth of what happened in my childhood and the lies I was taught about that truth, all of which have left me in a perpetual state of confusion to this day about who is telling me the truth and who is not. People often point out I am gullible. Well what the fuck do you expect when you lie to a human for 18 years about pretty much everything, then send them out into the world to face The Truth?

It’s very, very confusing being me.

There is another root. Shitville. Having lived under the daily threat of death for seven months there has, unsurprisingly, radically changed me. On the very rare occasions I venture out, my mind immediately begins to melt down, because it is convinced that that terrible bride will appear, leading a parade of bullies from Shitville, and they will all attack me. Physically. String me up. Kill me. 

You could argue that this fear is irrational, another one to toss on the mental illness pile. You wouldn’t be wrong. And it is so frustrating to see the problem, know the cause, but find no ready solution.

There are meds. I have been on meds before—disastrously in the 90s and then with some measure of success in recent years. The meds I take are for chronic depression and suicidal ideation. Since being home most of the time has alleviated the pressures of being triggered by the outside world, I am on a break from meds, though they might well become part of my future if I decide my future involves people. Because it seems to me that in order to be around other humans, I have to be medicated. 

In the meantime, I do a ton of research. What I’m after is not so much a cure—I don’t believe there is a full cure—but strategies to cope. I use my various diagnoses a bit like making “art” via a coloring book. The diagnoses are the lines and my job, for starters, is to color in between them. Take the meds, avoid x, y and z, get professional help. 

From there, I add and subtract things that do and do not work. I meditate. I exercise. I make myself eat something healthy every day, even when I don’t want to eat at all. I get massages. I ask for help (that’s a hard one). I tell people upfront that I struggle with mental illness because I find this is useful for both of us, with the added benefit of working to destigmatize mental illness. When the fuck are we going to understand that just as one cannot “snap out” of, say, covid, one cannot “snap out” of brain chemistry issues?

Yesterday, I directly communicated with my friend that, like it or not, my anxiety would be riding shotgun. There were some moments during our day when I stepped outside to breathe. It helped. I told myself over and over that the AirBnB guest was a grownup and that dogs can’t tell time.

And yes, I got us to the Blue Lapis Light show at the Seaholm Power Plant TWO hours early. That’s right. First in line. Easily. For an hour. My friend might have found my over-promptness excessive, and it was, but I also had avoided something that used to cause a guaranteed meltdown—not planning for traffic and parking. I used to be a really, really good driver. This is not true anymore. After years of mostly not driving, I have forgotten some of my defensiveness, which is too bad, because that was the one arena in which my famed defensiveness was a boon. These days I leave ample time for navigating.

I’m back in bed now, typing up these thoughts. It is such a relief to be here with my beasts and in my flannel jammies. But my respite is brief. I have committed to one more night out with my friend. A week into AirBnB and I have so many guests coming in the next few days I’m just going to have to figure it out. And I will. Because I always do. But I also know it’s not going to be easy.

I’m really interested to know how y’all are faring with resurfacing, especially those of you who really did lockdown lockdown for years. Is your people tolerance down? Is your crankiness up? Do you have any strategies to get you through the day? Do tell.