You Gotta Dance With The One Who Brung Ya

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.

The Man In The Arena

"It is not the critic who counts;
not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles,
or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena,
whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood;
who strives valiantly;
who errs,
who comes short again and again,
because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
but who does actually strive to do the deeds;
who knows great enthusiasms,
the great devotions;
who spends himself in a worthy cause;
who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement,
and who at the worst,
if he fails,
at least fails while daring greatly,
so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt from the speech "Citizenship in the Republic" given at the Sorbonne, 
Paris, France, April 23, 1910

Avoiding The Ultimate Fail Tip #1: Crack Tasks

 

With the previous post still fresh as a daisy in your little pate, I'm going to build on that a bit and talk about one (out of the vast repertoire) of compensating behaviors that many of us ADDers often find ourselves unconsciously doing in an attempt to emotionally salvage ourselves when faced with a larger than usual FoF (Fear of Failure).  

Often, when we are in the middle of a situation that is requiring us to either a) try with 100% of ourselves or where b) failure is not an option or c) both, we panic.  We freak out.  We freeze.  And when we freeze up, it means we are starting to get stuck.  And for ADD folks, 'stuck' is extremely nasty business.

You know how, when your car breaks down on the side of the road, how most folks can just call a tow truck and get unstuck?  Ok, well for ADD people 'getting stuck' is more like this...

True story, btw...

One time, when I was living in Colorado, there was a snow storm.  I know...crazy!  Anyway, at the time I was driving a little Volvo.  A little white Volvo. So on this particular, snowy day and for reasons I can't remember, I made plans (God knows why) to do something at a specific time...in Denver...which was, like a frigging hour away.  So I'm ready to leave and I go outside and, I don't know...I must not have been paying attention to THE WEATHER...cause I go outside and I realize that I can't see my car...it's already been partially buried from what I called snow, and from what other's (I later discovered) called an ensuing blizzard.  For NT's (neurotypicals), this probably would have been the first, and only, sign that they needed in order to realize that maybe they should  rethink their game plan for the day. But for me?  Fuck no, it was just something in my way that I needed to plow through (excuse the pun).  I wasn't going to let a little bliz...I mean 'snow', keep ME from doing the responsible thing by making me renig on whatever obligation I had committed myself to...in Denver!

So I start frantically digging out my car cause I know that once I get out of the driveway...things will be JUST FINE.  It's Colorado for pete's sake...they keep their roads plowed...they scoff at us Southerners for our snownoia. Coloradoians....they only close the schools for snow so that they can take a 'ski day'...and wrestling with an old lady for the last gallon of milk at the Ingles cause there's 2 in. on the ground? Unheard of!  So I dig out my car (after I find it), cause I know I'll be fine...I was responsible...I put chains on my tires and everything!  What could go wrong?

I get my car dug out, get in, get it all cranked and heated up and I quick get on the road...cause now I'm in a bit of a hurry due to a few tiny miscalculations I may have previously made while trying to solve the equation

Amount of Snow x Rate of Digging = Time Needed To Unearth My Car

But that's ok, I was a bit flustered, but I was certain that if I made a few adjustments, my new calculation: 

Distance x Increased Rate of Speed - Ongoing Raging Bliz, um, Flurry = On Time Arrival

...would get me back on track.  And 'staying on track', that's what responsible people do, right?  And, by God, I'm going to prove to myself that I'm one of those people...that I can not only exist, but excel in their world...that I'm not the Tiny Tim of Time Management, always peering into their windows, asking for more time gruel and limping around on a leg of lateness, propped up with a broken alarm clock...hell, no...not me...not any more...

So I'm zipping down the highway to meet my obligation and everything goes fine...for a while...

I don't know what happened...in retrospect I now see that my plan of driving 15 MPH over the speed limit in a white car in the middle of a full-on White Out could have used some tinkering...that maybe my calculations were a bit...well, fuck, I was an Art Major! Everyone knows Art Major's can't add!

Yep, that's just what I was thinking when I got shoved off of the road and into a snow bank by some crazy Coloradian in a gigantic SUV who apparently wasn't watching where I was going...in my little white Vovlo...in the middle of what I had just begun to accept, was a FUCKING BLIZZARD.  

But, you know, the Universe is merciful and sometimes, just sometimes, Fate is on your side...

I'd only been in the snow bank for about 5 minutes when, to my joy and amazement, I see a tow truck pulling over, in my rear view mirror.  Oh, happy day!  It's a sign from God that all is well, a little caviot, a helping hand to get me where I needed to go.  A little Cosmic Nod that my efforts to be responsible by doing whatever it took to meet the obligation I insisted on making (despite any logical reasoning)...that it had all been duly noted.  And this miracle tow truck?  It was a gift from the Universe, sent to help me succeed.

So the tow truck guy gets out, gets my car hooked up, I get in the truck with him, he lays on the gas...

And the tow truck, with my car attached...it was like the hand of God reached down and just pushed the whole kit and kaboodle straight sideways, further into the snowbank that I had been to start out with.  And then I think I heard God say something like "I said...STAY!" (or maybe it was the tow truck guy saying "You OK?" It was all a bit fuzzy...

So then tow truck guy #1 had to call tow truck driver #2 to come tow us both out.  Which he did.  Then he towed me back to my house, because, by then it was really late and I decided it would probably be prudent to reschedule my appointment, especially since it was now snowing really hard, all of a sudden, out of the blue. And I'm sure getting towed cost a fuck ton of money since my house was almost an hour away...money that I probably had to borrow from my dad or my brother...cause I didn't have AAA (who wants to be irresponsible with their money and pay for AAA after already paying for those snow tire chains?).

It was one of the first lessons I remember learning about how trying to be responsible isn't only hard, it's expensive!

Luckily, other than costing me (or someone) a lot of money, and besides all of the negative self-talk I'm sure I beat myself up with about how I didn't fulfill an obligation, once again, other than all of that, things were fine.  Which was good.  Because I had two jobs and I needed that car so that I could keep being responsible by paying my bills.  The importance of which I had apparently not fully recognized when I willingly jeopardized it, and thus, my ability to meet my most pressing responsibilities just so I could feel good about myself for meeting a much smaller one. 

But that's what ADD people do...when faced with the challenge of having to choose between doing something that is very important in our lives, something that requires 100% effort and/or has no complete guarantee of success and/or is something that can't be finished immediately vs. doing a bunch of little 'nice idea' things that only require 50% effort, but which they are certain they are able to do and which has a quick complete time...ADDers will often choose the latter.  Those 50% tasks are the Crack of the Time Management.  They instantly feed our wounded egos and give us a false sense of pride in a 'job well done'. And they are usually tasks that involve other people.  These little Crack Tasks are usually ones we intentionally create and then label as imperative' when, in reality, though they may be nice, they are usually completely unnecessary to our survival.  

This is how the usual Crack Task is created...

We need to concentrate on an Imperative Task and it's daunting, or frustrating, or confusing and our ADD brain realizes this and starts to freak out.  The Amygdala hears this and starts sending some little FoF zaps to the our inner ADD self.  But our inner ADD, honestly, it's not the most astute pencil in the box...it doesn't really realize what's happening, if it did it could just yell over to the Amygdala to quit being such a bully.  The Amygdala is ALL talk.  But inner ADD, she doesn't know this, she thinks all of those silly threats are actually real.  She doesn't know she's being manipulated, so she just stands there mumbling 'This is bad. Very bad.'  And the seed of a new Crack Task is planted...

And when this happens, what WE do is get up and go immediately hunt down the next potential 50% task like a junkie looking for a fix.  We'll go out there and find some poor, unsuspecting 'nice' person and we will convince ourselves of how 'nice' it would be if we did some (what is now monumentally imperative) 'nice' thing for them...now...right now...because, you  know,  we're 'nice' and they're 'nice' and wouldn't it be such a 'nice' thing to do? So we find our 'nice' mark and we create a 'nice' obligation for ourselves, and then we proceed to stab them in the eye with our Dagger of Goodwill...whether they like it or not.

And, as we are flying around, caught up in the middle of what usually turns out to be a spastic frenzy, freaking out  because we have now realized that this little monster we have created to avoid our Imperative Task in sucking up WAY more time than we had anticipated, we realize that, yep, that Imperative Task...it's still...waiting...patiently...yep...still there...Thank goodness we decided to take this little detour so the we could avoid feeling anxious and frustrated and confused!  We are so smart!  And nice! We rule!

Except for those times that we end up freaking out so badly we fail at most of the 50% Crack Tasks AND fail at the Imperative Task, simultaneously...It happens more than you think...you'd be surprised...

And why do I think that this particular ADD stunt is important enough to make it the Number One tip for avoiding The Ultimate Fail? Two reasons...

a)  I've seen you do it twice in the past week, that I know of...do the words 'Birthday Cake' and 'Potluck' ring any bells?And before you reflexively launch that thing in your head that trumpets out all of the reasons why, this time, those Imperative' Crack Tasks REALLY were Imperative", lemme just point out that YOU, the single, busy mother, YOU are the reason why grocery stores invented the Deli Section.  And before you start swinging wild about cake, and Luca's birthday and being a good NICE mother who needed to keep her word to her child so he wasn't disappointed...on his birthday of all days...I just wanna say this.  He's three and, like most three year olds, he likes cake...any cake.  He probably would have eaten birthday cake from a Roach Coach and been pleased as punch.  And you know this, because you have a full grasp on what one is and isn't able to manipulate a three year old with.  And it's not like Luca just came up to you one day and said "Mother...it would mean ever so much to me if, on my birthday a fortnight from now, you baked for me, with your own hands, a devilishly clever shark cake." No...somewhere along the way, some nice person decided that she needed to obligate herself to doing a SUPER nice, albeit, time consuming, thing for her beloved son in the middle of exam week. I have no idea what the particular Fear of Failure bubbles were, that must have been popping up, or why...but at some point a very nice mother looked at her very nice son and asked "What kind of cake do you want for your birthday?'" And that would have been fine if the implied choices were things like, I don't know...chocolate or vanilla?  But those parameters weren't specified and so, instead of choosing chocolate, Luca chose Shark.  

The funny part of this story (cause, I swear, it is pretty hysterical) lays in the ironic fact that you decided at some point that it was an Imperative Task...this Shark Cake thing...and, for whatever reasons, you used the same reasoning skills that I mentioned I, myself, used before during a Colorado blizzard...you used that same logicalitude to come to the decision that a store bought cake or a quickie cake wouldn't work...maybe it didn't meet up to your internal personal standards for what one should do as a 'good mother' or maybe you didn't feel right about trying to manipulate him back to a chocolate or vanilla choice and so, despite knowing he wouldn't remember it, you decided to remind him of how, last year, you'd told him  that, this year, he could have a Shark Cake...I don't know...But, and here's the funniest part...

You weren't willing to manipulate him into a chocolate cake from the deli, BUT you WERE willing to manipulate him into believing his birthday was on a completely different day!

...so you could make this Imperative Shark Cake Crack Task happen! But THEN, on his Fake Birthday, something went South, some kind of Shark Cake Calamity...and so instead of making a a pan cake with a shit ton of sprinkles and some candles for him, for his real birthday, instead you decided your best course of action was to bust your ass so that you could celebrate his Fake Birthday with a Shark Cake...a day late!  Oh...my..God!  I'm about to pee myself! I love you!  You're funny as shit!  And as long as you're around, I'll never feel all alone with my crazy!  I REALLY AM your big sister, passing on, to you, all of my knowledge and expertise! You're like my very own ADD mini-me!

Now, don't get me wrong...it turned out lovely... and I'm not suggesting there was anything wrong, AT ALL,  with moving his birthday date around....he's three!  He doesn't know the difference.  I'm just saying that there's probably a sizable amount of nonADD, busy single mothers out there who would have picked Door #3 - a Fake Birthday AND a Deli Cake...You are a nice person and a good mother and you did a very nice thing for three year old child. You are a talented Shark Cake Baker and you did a very good job, You should be proud...which you were...cause you took pictures and put them on FB.  That Shark Cake is something that I'm sure you, at the very least, will remember...especially if, in the end, it becomes just another time-eating Crack Task that leads to an Ultimate Nursing School Fail. But that's OK, I'm sure if that happens, Luca will understand completely...when he's 18 and ready to go to college...especially after you show him the pictures...he'll be like "Getting that Shark Cake when I was 3 was WAY better than getting a degree in Political Science!  You're the nicest, goodest mom in the whole wide world!"  Oh, simmer down...I'm just picking on ya' to make a point...it really was a nice cake.

But the sooner you separate your real 'self' from your ADD behaviors, so that you can laugh at crazy shit ADD makes you think and feel, the better off you're gonna be. And, hey, comparatively speaking, having an ADD brain is a hell of a lot more fun and entertaining for everyone than, say, having an Antisocial Brain...or a Paranoid Schizophrenic Brain.  It's a lot easier to laugh and diffuse your shame when you do something embarrassing because you have ADD, than it is to laugh when you do something embarrassing because you have Antisocial Personality Disorder ...cause stupid shit. like losing your keys, is ALWAYS gonna be funnier than boiling your married lover's pet bunny...at least to other people.

b) and the second reason I think making this Crack Tasks the #1 Tip when trying to avoid the Ultimate Fail?  Because I'm an expert at Crack Tasking.  As a matter of fact,  I'm Crack Tasking RIGHT NOW...because I'm doing this blog thing and have been FOR HOURS!  Why?  Because it's fun and because I can justify it in my brain by telling myself that what I have to say is Imperative...for you, my unsuspecting mark...

But where's my Cozi Calendar schedule I've been meaning to do since yesterday?  And what''s up with all of that paperwork I need to fill out for our doctor's so they can see us for things like breast reduction surgery and dementia screening?  And why is that bowl of henna sitting the fridge instead of being on my hair?  And why have my clean clothes been sitting on the floor so long that I now have to rewash them? And where's my breakfast? I should probably go find it...

Failure Is Not An Option!

So that phrase has been running through my head, every day, since you first said it to me...Man, it's REALLY inspirational...and not in a Hearts and Flowers, Halmarky kinda way...in more of a Nerves of Steel, Commando sort of way...you'd think it'd be scary.  And maybe it would be if someone else were saying it to me, about me...but something about me saying it to myself...gotta say...I'm lovin' it!

Now, I know...if you wanna be 100%  realistic about the whole thing, I know that it's impossible to really say that "Failure is not an option." Cause we both know that in the literal context, it is.  And it's been this knowledge about the existence of this option, and our relationship with it, over our lives, that has probably done us in or held us back more than any other brain machination.

See, you and I, we've never been the sort to live a life where we experience occasional failures, as they happen...a life where we, then, lick our wounds, process our failures, learn from them and then say to ourselves ÖK, I got it now." so we can move gracefully on, into our futures...We do not "Fail and Go"! Nor do we 'Quick Fail', "Fail in the Moment', 'Fail in Perspective' or 'Fail for the Day.'. No...we are Fail Loungers ..we like to take our time so we can really immerse ourselves in the subtleties of the soul-blackening, hope-guillotine that is 'The Lingering Fail'.  We are also Enthusiasts, Connesuars, and Prolific Creators of The Imaginary Fail...the Remotely Possible, In-A-Parellel-Universe, with one hand tied behind my back and the other holding a cup of Dark Matter"' Fail. Were there a market, we could have made a killing. No Failure Too Big or Too Small For Us To Conceive Of. Unfortunately we'd be the only buyers since it's absolutely unimaginable for either of us to come up with failure for people we love...for people we love, we only have thoughts and words and deeds of encouragement and hope.  For people we love, we only think of ways we can help them succeed.

But for you and I...somehow we have managed for most of our lives to fill up the brunt of our days with every possible, imagined failure we can conjure up PLUS every actual failure from our past that we've taken and magnified and amplified 100 times over...no wonder we have such a fear about failure!  With a billion possible ways to fail running through our minds, who wouldn't be fucking terrified? And no wonder we've spent so much time, in the past, in 'My Life Improvement Plan Limbo!  When you have to go through all of the gazillions of mental gyrations and then suffer the ensuing emotional exhaustions...all just from conjuring up the myriad number of the ways you could possibly fail...and you have to go through it again and again, every time you want to try and make just one, tiny new change that you feel might improve your life and bring you joy...Well, holy hell, it's a wonder we're not permanently curled up into a fetal position on the floor of the closet!  Who can be expected to go out there and 'be all we can be' under these circumstances?  It's ridiculous!  Who has the time?

Failure is not an option?  FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION?  Are you frigging kidding me?  Not when you take all of the possible ways I've come up with to fail in any situation, and compare them with all of the ways I've come up with to succeed! Statistically speaking, failure is not an option, 99.99% of the time, it's the only option.  Using to my faulty logic calculations, based entirely on facts I have gathered using my miraculous ability to see into a  gazillion imaginary futures, I can predict my future of failures with almost complete certainty.  I'm like Nostradamus...but without all of that hopeful, rhymey, Ít All Ends Well' bullshit.

So here's the question I've been asking myself for the last several days...Have I ever, in my life, committed myself, 100% to something I really wanted, even when I wasn't 100% certain I could succeed?  Especially when I wasn't 100% certain I could succeed?  And the answer is...yes.  Three times.  I feel like I did that when I decided that I wanted to buy my house in Durham.  And I feel like I have done that, am doing that, in my marriage (despite my occasional backpeddling).  And I feel like I did that in my first marriage...until he cheated the first time...and then I wavered...but when it ended, part of what hurt so much was that I knew I had really tried, with all of my heart...and it failed anyway.  I put my whole heart into it, which is why, when it got broken, it got broken so big. Yeah, that failure hurt.  But I've been able to go into my future and love again, with the self-knowledge that I was a good wife, that I am a good wife...that I'm loyal and kind and committed to the people I love.  Danny had to go into his future with shame and self-recriminations that persist to this day...he wishes he had tried harder to keep our relationship, to stop the demise of our marriage and to keep losing me from becoming what he calls now the 'biggest regret' of his life.  The way you feel about yourself when you fail at something you want to accomplish, despite having done your very best...it's very different than how you end up feeling when you fail at something that you know you held part of your self back from or that you gave up, in some way, on. If you give 100% of yourself to something, you may fail, but your failure won't feel as personal because you know that there was absolutely nothing more that you could do.  But when you are half-hearted, and you fail, the failure feels personal.  And it feels that way, because it is, because you know you could have done more and for whatever reasons, you chose not to.

For those of us who spent most of our lives with untreated or undiagnosed ADD, it's all muddy water. We've already spent a lot of time feeling like we should have done more with our lives, should have done things differntly, should have been able to do what other's are so obviously able to...we spent the first parts of our lives really trying, really doing our best, despite failing, over and over again.  After a while it just gets easy to stop going all in on the dreams we have for our life because we've come to believe that, for us, giving 100% or 50%...it doesn't matter... it all ends in the same place. And as the failures and missed opportunities go up, how much and how often we feel able to try, goes down.  By the time we get diagnosed and get medicated, we've grown accustomed to our lack of hope.  We've all but forgotten, if we ever realized at all, how much strength and determination we actually possess.  Most of the time we never saw, beyond the fact that we failed, how much courage it has always taken for us to continue to try, over and over again, as well.  So when I said, earlier that I had only given myself to things 100%, three times in my life, that's not actually true.  I've done my best hundreds of times...it's just that for many of those times, I didn't succeed.  And this 'giving up' thing, this learned helplessness disaster of the last 6 years or so...it came from the exhaustion of failing for the very last time that I could handle.  It came from failing at a time when Gene was sick and going through treatment, a time when failure was not an option.  Until, despite my best efforts, it became one.  And it broke me.  For a while.

So have I ever said to myself "Failure is not an option"? Just the once. I never really had to, before then. And when we found out his treatment failed, that became my failure, too.  If I had only done more, been better, not been crazy, not had to go to Holly Hill, took better care of him, not been sick, figured out how to single-handedly cure Hep C...it was the failure of all failures for me.  It was a failure that happened DESPITE doing my best and DESPITE the fact that failure was not on option and DESPITE the fact that I wasn't just failing myself, even worse, I was failing my new husband, a person that I swore to myself when I married him, I would NEVER fail in the ways that really matter. For me, all of this...it was the Ultimate Fail...and it sucked. I had always assumed that if I tried really, really hard one day to do something that was really, really important, I would be able to.  And I justified my lack of effort with anything, up to that point, by telling myself that there was nothing that important I really cared about.  But real reason that I had not had more successes in my life?  I stopped trying a long time ago for anything, any dream, any goal, unless I was either certain I could succeed or unless I fully accepted, and didn't care, that failure was an option. And after my Ultimate Fail, I stopped dreaming altogether and started doing...nothing.  And SURPRISE!  Apparently it's possible to do virtually nothing at all...for years...and STILL FAIL!  Unbelievable!

So now I'm back to a situation that requires me to give 100%.  A situation where failure is not an option. Because, now, for me, '"failure" quite literally means my death...my early, avoidable death. And I can't have this failure.  Because this failure of an early, avoidable death would also mean that I have failed my sick husband...again...The thought of making him watch me die an early, avoidable death, the thought of him being left here, alone, in God knows what kind of mental decline, the thought of him possibly having to be taken care of by strangers who don't know him, don't know about Aspergers, or of someone else having Power of Attorney over him and having power to do things like force him to move, to leave his home or of him being put into a nursing home before it's really necessary just because there is no one left to care for him.  The possibility of all of that makes the possible imaginary future of dying an early, avoidable death a failure that I can't currently live with, today.  It's the type of failure that, if I weren't already dead, would destroy me. And I know this because my ability to prognosticate my possible futures, should I continue to avoid changing my life, has told me so.  It's amazing to me that I am so supremely able to believe that the imaginary failures, past and future, are real, yet I have been unable to believe in the reality of the very real present that I live infor some time, now, despite being quasi-aware of the fact that it's a reality that will only continue to worsen until it turns into my very real future. If I do not accept my reality EVERY DAY and take actions EVERY DAY to better shape my future, I can guarantee you, in the end, my future will be far worse than anything I have ever been able to imagine about my life, in the past. I now realize that worrying about failure, all of these years, letting failure be an option...it was always a luxury. And it's meant for those people who can factor in the possibility of failure as an unwanted, but still livable outcome for their lives and their future happiness.  But for those of us who can't...for those of us see failure as the demise of the future they need in order to be happy, self sufficient, and hell, even alive...for us, failure is really not an acceptable option.  Not any more.

Man...I really wish you had said that phrase to me a LOT sooner...like when I was in 10th grade...

If, every time we hit a snag, we can imagine a gazillion ways this latest bump will probably contribute to our ultimate failure, then I'm quite sure we can also imagine a gazillion ways we can fix it, in order to succeed.

It's true, we're not young any more and yes, we are grayer and plumper than we were when we were 18.  But we're both SO smart, and kind, and capable and wise.  We have SO many Super Powers!  It's time that we finally turned those Super Powers on ourselves and used them for good, not evil.

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And just so you don't think I'm throwing you to the wolves...everything I'm suggesting you do, I'm gonna do myself...I'm gonna make my own Cozi Calendar...and I'm gonna sign up for the online support group, too. Cause I can't very well be suggesting things that I either can't or won't do myself, eh?  It's long past time we organized our lives so that they more closely resemble 'normal'...I'm not a big fan of 'normal', but that's how the rest of the world operates and I DO want to be part of the world and want to be able to function decently within it...I've had the 'luxury'of skirting this issue for some time now...and you see where that's gotten me...secluded, STILL fat, STILL unhealthy and STILL living in a cluttered house...

We both have dreams for our futures.  Dreams that we have the ability and the courage to pursue with our whole beings.  If we can only get past the negative tape loops from past failures in our heads.  One of my favorite sayings is "The definition of crazy is doing the same thing, over and over again, yet expecting different results." We can't help having ADD, but we can help being crazy.  Cause we're not crazy...so we both need to stop acting that way, over and over again, while expecting things to turn out differently in our lives.  We both know better, at this point...or we should.  We have had enough proof, by now, that we possess faulty logic about certain things.  We have to remember that it's OK to not know.  But it's not OK, once we know, to pretend like we don't.  It's pointless to wallow in blame and self recriminations.  So, you know, just DON'T!  And every time you start to feel shitty and worthless about any of this stuff...from now on...just STOP IT!  And if you have trouble stopping it...watch this...again and again...as many times as it takes...