The following is from my personal journal, with names redacted to protect the innocent. I haven’t updated this (blog? Site? Garbage dump of the soul?) since fucking April, and not that anyone’s checking back for updates, I figured this particular piece of writing might provide some insight as to why that is. I suspect that there’s additional brain fog in play thanks to March’s bout with Covid (I definitely have some ongoing lung crud occurring, so you know, that’s nice) but it’s been suggested to me that I might have an avoidant personality type (I bristle at the word “disorder”) so that’s giving me a lot to think about (and I don’t like it, so stay tuned to the end of this for a bonus hastily-written run on sentence originally posted to Tumblr on this subject). ANYWAY, without further bullshit preamble:
Wednesday August 14th
See, the problem is I have difficulty prioritizing. It’s okay to spend the better part of an hour scrolling Tumblr because then I get lots of inspiration for things and the thoughts start flowing and it’s not that I’m bored or can’t think of what to do, it’s that I can’t narrow down what I want to do in this one moment. Like right now I want to:
- work out how to finish off the top of my crocheted hoodie scarf without any leftover stitches, and I have an idea of how to do that, it just means sitting down and counting and placing some stitch markers and doing it ✅ (in the evening, but still)
- do a couple of Spanish lessons ✅
- eat breakfast ✅ (somewhat, ate the yoghurt anyway)
- Read/listen to a book ✅ (finished the Paul Tremblay short)
- revise a poem I wrote a couple of years ago (working title Ode to Insomnia) which makes me think of another poem I want to revise (luna nueva en la habana) ❌
- work on the vampire story ❌
- (Redacted: a list of specific issues with said story)
- work on the Magical Girl story
- (Note here to see list of specific issues with the vampire story that have been redacted for the purpose of blog publication)
- drink my coffee before it gets cold ❌
- oh my god actually eat breakfast because my stomach is gnawing itself to death ✅ (eventually, some time between noon and 3pm)
- drink some water because I have been really bad at it for two days and I’m probably killing myself slowly ✅-ish
- write that email to (redacted) about (redacted) oh my god ❌
- follow (redacted) back on Instagram ❌
- oh my god actually talk to (redacted) ❌
- look into all of the things that define “avoidant personality [disorder]” and honestly I think defining/naming traits both temporary and seemingly more permanent as “personality disorders” does a lot of damage to how we see ourselves and then how other people see us, because phrasing like that naturally tends towards a negative perception, but what alternatives do we have when terminology like that exists in so-called professional mental health discourse and therefore ends up smashed into societal lingo? I still need a shorthand way to describe the way my ADHD forgetfulness intersects with a notion that any interaction with others will create a loop of imaginary pressure—a claustrophobic squeeze in my solar plexus as expectations both real and imagined begin to pile up the longer it takes me to get back to someone or do something I said I would do—so I can figure out how to talk myself out of isolation and actually go participate in the world, which I will then go do for a maximum of about two weeks before I have a lapse in interaction and then have to convince myself to roll the boulder up the hill again and honestly there are some days where I wonder if I could just fake my death and go live in a forest without telling anyone, but I’m still a social creature despite every attempt of my father to yank it out of me and I know that to have community I must participate in the making of it, but see, that was a lot of words when “avoidant personality type” might do, and maybe “type” is a better word than “disorder,” but it still comes with the baggage of the word “avoidant,” which I think can be often read as “lazy,” when I’m not lazy, not exactly—
- and here I stop at 12:09pm to finally open the yoghurt I’ve had sitting out since 11:30 and take hurried spoonfuls between bursts of words because if I set down the thought for even a second it might wander off into a dense thicket of brambles never to be seen again, and that’s the other problem with prioritizing; I need the ability to do several things at once so I don’t lose any of it, because if a thought/concept/idea is not continuously haunting me then it will run away as soon as I turn my back, which is why I can go to look something up on my phone and be waylaid by different other things vying for my attention and put the device down six or seven times before yelling damn it and remembering what I even unlocked the blasted thing for, and maybe on this eighth attempt I’ll open the right app and type in what I’m looking for, but maybe I’ll be foiled by a distracting pop-up that yeets the very thought out of my mind right into the brambles, so I have to close the app and reopen it, the way my mother would walk into a room and say “what did I even come in here for?” and jog her memory by walking out and walking back in again, which is also something I do, and in both cases this method is not guaranteed to produce results, but at least three weeks from now I’ll wake up in the middle of the night and be flooded by thoughts of botched internet searches, people who might have assumed at this point that I am either dead or an unreliable asshole who doesn’t actually like anyone, that one time it took me over a month to reply to someone I love because I was afraid of wording myself wrong, and innumerable other social missteps that have led me to completely detach from certain people so I don’t have to subject them to my idiocy and inability to make regular, meaningful eye contact, but I comfort myself with the idea that any weird shit I’ve said or done at least gives them something to talk about or a story to tell (the alternative being that they don’t think of me at all, which is also comforting, so either way it balances out)—
- and do you know how many blog posts I’ve started and written almost to completion, dithered on how to conclude, and then never actually posted them because who wants to read yet another essay from some dickhead who can’t even finish an associates degree on topics ranging from ADHD to capitalism to eating disorders to the way my teeth itch when I consider how temporary struggles with substance misuse have been turned into a three-ring circus/rehab cartel (based on unrevised junk science and faith) featuring in-group/us vs. them vocabulary (providing alternate definitions for words like “recovery” and “sobriety” and “amends” and turning them into loaded guns that limit honest conversations between steppers and “normies”), because opinion pieces are all well and good but if you’re going to express these things with your whole chest you need to bring citations, and research for me tends to plummet all the way down a rabbit hole or fizzle like a wet firecracker when my eyes glaze over after three paragraphs
and I choose to write a journal entry instead because I have to write all of these thoughts down; I would be making a check-off list in one of my notebooks anyway, because if I don’t stop and note down all of the things that are in my head that I want to do some of them will float away on the breeze and I’ll forget about them until two or three weeks down the line and then be filled with dread when I think about how much I could have done with them if only I could hold myself down and actually work.
//
Bonus (?) Tumblr post (one run-on sentence that had dreams of being some properly formatted paragraphs one day):
Petition to change the word “disorder” in various “diagnoses” to “type” or “tendency” because yeah I tick all the boxes for “avoidant personality disorder,” but there’s something malignant about the phrase “personality disorder” that feels hopeless, like it’s a permanent thing that can’t be overcome ever at all and you’re just stuck like this with the exception of learning a bunch of skills to pretend to fit in better, and also that’s my problem with diagnostics in the first place, and yes the second D in ADHD stands for “disorder,” but it’s easy to forget that if I’m just referring to it with initials, and I know labels can be helpful for making connections or explaining oneself or finding understanding/help (I feel this way about ADHD and autism) but I would really like, just for one moment, to not feel so completely broken by the way my whole fucking system adapted to child abuse and shaped me into the goblin of an adult I am now, one with a perpetual stomach ache who struggles with existence because the child she was didn’t actually understand what a future was or could be after years of being told she was so useless she should kill herself, and I’ve been feeling better about a lot of stuff lately but these things still exist under the surface and I don’t talk about them a lot here but they’re there, which comes back around to the feeling of permanence in diagnoses, but healing isn’t linear and maybe I’m just having a storm cloud moment today and I should just chill out and eat a sandwich and listen to some rain videos and I’ll be back to a generally optimistic outlook within 3-5 business days, but god, I wish I could tell myself with the same kind of conviction I tell others that you’re fine and you are lovely and have many good qualities and it doesn’t matter how slow you take it, you’re still making things, and it’s okay if you’re not cut out for college or a profession, you matter because you’re a human being and actually believe it for myself the way I do for them.
Cosmic’s Read-o-Rama 