I love this drawing. It's called The Maiden and Death and was done by Edvard Munch, The Scream guy. I think he may have been a little Dysthymic...
Anyway, as you may have noticed, I'm trying to go with a theme, here, and build on previous posts so they aren't all random and willy nilly and, well, ADD like...
So you know the thing I mentioned earlier about spending the last 6 years doing nothing? What I should have said was that I did nothing physically. What I DID do for the past 6 years, while laying around, avoiding movement, was think. I've done a LOT of thinking...oh...and reading...but mainly thinking. Cause when you wake up one morning and discover that you seem to have turned into a completely different, opposite of improved, person almost over night, it makes you think.
And you know some I figured out just yesterday (as I was talking to Gene about how I had written to you about my Ultimate Fail)? What I realized was several years ago was that, after going through the experience of failing at something that I had tried 100% and where Failure had not been an option, I was forced to accept the fact that I had been wrong in my life-long assumption that, under such circumstances, I would always find a way to succeed. Yesterday I realized what discovering this actually meant. It meant (though I didn't realize it, till now) that every little thing that I had ever dreamed of doing in my life or with my life, before that realization that sprang from my Ultimate Fail, I had just always told myself "I could do it/be it if I wanted to...I'm just choosing not to." But after? After, it took every little imagined success, every alternative life I had created for myself, in my head, every dream, every future goal, it took all of those 'me's' that existed, quite concretely, in my brain and it killed them. Before, those possible me's were so solid in my head, because I was CERTAIN that all I had to do to pluck them out and make them real, all I ever had to do was try 100%. It never dawned on me that it could be any other way. Of course, when I say that out loud, the egomanical audacity of my previous self kinda creeps me out a little. I mean, really...what normal person, at the age of 35, has the sudden realization that they are probably too old to ever compete in the Olympics...and is actually surprised by this knowledge? Other than me...cause I was...
But, yeah...so when I had my Ultimate Fail, I didn't just fail in THAT situation...I'm pretty sure something happened deep in my brain, some kind of domino, house of cards disaster...where I then, subconsciously, became uncertain that I would definitely succeed at ANY of the hundreds of things, at becoming ANY of the possible me's, that I had always just taken for granted I could...if I really wanted to. Looking back, I realize that I had NO IDEA, at all, how to work towards a dream or a goal that I wasn't certain I could attain. I'm not sure I know how to, now.
Funny thing, though...you'd think I'd know all about feeling uncertain, considering how many times I had actually HAD a goal or dream that I tried to reach, but that ended up falling apart. You'd THINK I would have been better prepared to realize there are no guarantees of success. But SOMEHOW, in my wacky brain, I never really internalized this fact, so I never tried for something with any real feelings that I could possibly fail. And every time I did fail, I just told myself that I could have succeeded, if I had chosen to give 100%, which I didn't cause I chose not to...for some crazy reason or other.
Now here's the shiny penny of it all...what I realize now is that all of those internal, imaginary possible me's that I used to believe were so real all I had to do was pick one out like you would at a store...what I realize now is that they HAD to die. Cause they were such a certainty, to me, that it almost seemed pointless to try and actually MAKE them materialize...they were as real as you could get without actually being, you know...real. As awful as it was to lose that sense of certainty about who I thought I could be, it's been necessary in order to begin to discover who I actually, really am. And...oh...my...GOD...this whole process has been so...fucking...HARD! And, you know, all of those years that I drank didn't help any of this much...cause it's EASY to pretend to yourself about shit, it's easy to really believe that you could be anyone and do anything, if you just choose to, when you drink a lot, it's easy to believe in all of the people you could be, while the real Rome of you is burning...it's easy. Mistakes were made. It's true.
And, I'm telling ya, I can look back over my emotional and spiritual growth of the past several years and it's like literally watching all the developmental stages, starting in infancy, happen in fast motion...to me! As a matter of fact, six, seven years ago, when I first started 'losing it' in Stem (which I'm certain, now, was probably the outward manifestation of those 'absolute certainty'dominoes starting to fall deep in my unconscious self) again, quite literally, I spent several months curled up in a little ball like a baby and crying for my mother. Well, not MY mother (though at the time, I didn't know this), but crying for my imaginary mother...that lived in my brain with all of those imaginary me's. Honestly...bawling...literally.
And now...I don't know...I think I'm probably about 26 or 27 in my head. Something like that. Which is kinda cool since I enjoyed being that age.
But the thing about all of this, in relation to ADD, is that I now find it interesting that one of the first things I chose to do, when I finally stopped crying and crawling and could walk again, was to go out and find someone to help me deal with my ADD. Because in Happy Land, where things happen in your life in the order they are supposed to, having a diagnosis and getting help for my ADD should have been one of the first things that happened to me as a child. If that had happened, it would have created a much better foundation for me and for my life because I would have had the tools that I needed, at various points, while going to school. It would have made the chances of educational success much more likely and for someone like me who has a brain like I do, it's almost criminal not to have a higher education. I'm a natural born thinker. I'm good at it. So are you.
And I believe that it's been necessary for me to go through this often, quite painful struggle of accepting that, for me, failure actually is an option, even under the best circumstances. I've had to understand that failure is real, more concrete than any of my imaginary selves were, because only in this context can I begin to recognize, in my life, all of the things in, internal and external, that create and nurture failure as an outcome. You can't prepare for or fight something that you don't believe exists...but once you know differently, THEN you have the power to beat it back, to find a way, to try and try again, because THEN you can really tell yourself that, though it's an option, you refuse to let it be an option you willingly accept. You can make a commitment to yourself that, this time, you won't give up, ever. no matter what...that you will fight till the end, 100%. And this commitment you've made to yourself to do everything in your power to succeed, this commitment makes it possible for you to really trust that if humanly possible, you will succeed. Now you can make a promise to yourself that failure is not an option...and finally, really believe it.
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