Barnmaven

Lady, you are so fired

There are three things it is nearly impossible to find when you relocate from one town to another: 

• Dentist
• Lady doctor
• Hairdresser

I finally found the right dentist and hairdresser in the last couple of months.  It took damn near five years, but I finally found the right fit.  Personality is a big part of it, but quality of service is important too.  I want care providers I enjoy interacting with and from whom I can expect not just a high quality of care but some personal attention.  I want them to remember who I am, what I've discussed with them in the past, what my kids names are.  I want them to remember that I never shut up about horses and special needs kids and that I hate needles and I also hate having my hair styled like I'm somebody's middle aged mother.  (Yes, I know that's what I am, I just don't need my hairdresser reminding me of it.  I want The Sexy.)

I had found what I thought was a great little practice.  It catered to mothers and children and was run by a Registered Nurse Practicioner.  They had a funky little clinic and even offered sick child care at a reasonable cost for mothers who had a sick child with whom they were unable to stay home that day.  I liked having a female practicioner for my female stuff, and I liked that she could also manage my ADHD meds.  I mostly didn't mind the long waits when I went in.  For one, OB practices are often like that.  A baby arriving might push all the appointments back.  And because she would take time talking to me, I assumed that she gave the same consideration to her other patients.  I liked that. 

Little by little, though, things changed.  And I didn't like it.  First she started offering the HCG diet out of her practice.  I'm one of those people who think that fad diets are dangerous and I wasn't impressed that my doctor was jumping on the fad diet bandwagon.  The waits started getting longer.  I waited an hour for an appointment, and it was pretty clear from the stack of people in her waiting room that she was trying to rotate too many patients.   And then, two visits ago, at the end of my visit, she handed me a business card with my prescription.  It was for a company that sells internet service and cable tv and wireless plans.  "I dont' know if I told you about this company I'm representing.  If you are in need of any data services please give me a call." 

I know doctors don't make a lot of money these days and I realize that its terribly expensive to run an OB practice with the burden of medical malpractice insurance, but really?  I'm a little more compartmentalized than that.  You're the doctor who looks at my vagina.  I really don't want you reviewing my cell phone usage, too.  And if you're trying to take care of too many patients at one time, its a sure bet every single one of us is getting a lower quality of care.

I guessed (correctly) at that point that finances were strained and she was looking to supplement her income in any way possible.  And of course, she has the right to do that.  I might not have jumped ship at that point, because I am human and I do try to be understanding.  But after the last appointment I don't know any other way to proceed.  I made an appointment for a prescription refill.  I hadn't been to her practice for three months.  I pulled up to the door with 10 minutes to spare for my appointment, only to find an empty office.  Empty as in completely devoid of furniture, phones and people.  A sign on the door only said that the office was closed, but didn't indicate if it had moved somewhere else.  I was confused.  I had made the appointment only a few days earlier.   Did they close their doors suddenly?  So I called them, and when the receptionist answered I was even more confounded.  "We moved offices." 

Wouldn't that be something you might have wanted to tell me when I made the appointment?  Or maybe added on to the "No Longer in Business" sign on your door?  So I threw the kids back in the car and drove to the new location.  I waited forty-five minutes to be seen, though the guy schlepping pharmaceuticals came in after I did and got to go back and have a few minutes of her time before I got to have my appointment.  I had to fill out all new paperwork because apparently my old paperwork didn't move to her new office with her.  And at the end of my ten minute appointment (that I had to wait a half hour for), she once again handed me her new business card with my prescription.  "I don't know if I told you about this company I'm representing."

Yes, yes you have. 

I suppose if I was interested in a dialogue I would let her know personally why I'm leaving her practice.  But the thing is, I never know if someone really cares that you don't want to be their client anymore.  Not if they don't care about telling you they've moved or remembering what they talked to you about the last time you looked at their cervix.  I mean, she'll figure it out when I don't come see her anymore.  I'm sure the request from my new doctor for my medical records will be a clue too.

 

Traumatic

I have always loved words.  I grasped the concept of reading at the age of three and I never looked back.  Through the bright afternoons of my childhood and the impossibly dark years of puberty and college, reading provided me with a way to escape, an avenue of avoidance.  My life has never been so bad, but I did have a lot to avoid.

That early grasp of language earned me a boot uphill, out of kindergarten and into the first grade.  Academically I was more than ready, and it feels sometimes that I got average grades in school simply because I was always three steps ahead of where the rest of the class was learning, and so distractible if I couldn't be challenged, that I just got bored and stopped trying.  Academics were never really the issue, but social skills were for most of my childhood the crisis du jour.  Its one thing to say that I was a precocious little girl who easily got along with most adults and never met a stranger.  Its another to say that I had, then and now, difficulty making friends within my peer group.  Then, it was hard to be the child who wasn't socially mature, who was sensitive, who cried easily.  Whether it was that they sensed in me an easy type of prey or whether they resented me for being smart or just because they loathed me on sight, the girls in my classes from elementary school all the way up were not kind to me.  I had few friends, none of them from my class in school.  The older I got and the more aware of it I was, the worse it felt. 

When I started fifth grade we had a new teacher at my school.  She and I did not click well, she seemed to resent the time that I was pulled from her class for advanced learning modules, and I didn't have any respect for her.  I sensed clearly that she did not like me, and I simply refused to perform.  My mother met with the teacher a few times, and then with the principal.  When it became clear that we were going nowhere fast, my mom applied to the district to put me in a different school.

This meant Mom had to pick me up and drop me off at school every day, but apparently she felt this was worth the effort. 

It was in fifth grade that I started to develop, somewhat.  I got my first bra that year. 

They didn't make stretchy little cotton training bras back in 1975.  They made torture ensembles of heavy straps and heavy cups, or so it seemed to me.  But I was proud of my new bra.  I thought it made me very grown up.

My first day at my new school with my new bra, I showed it to one of the girls in the bathroom.  "What size is it?" she asked.  "32A," I proudly replied.

That was the last moment I was proud of my boobs for a number of years.  Because the minute I walked out of the girls bathroom into the hallway and onto the playground for recess, my new classmates had cleverly concocted a little chant just for my benefit:

Roses are red, Violets are blue - Mary wears a bra sized THIRTY TWO!

I wanted the pavement to crack open and swallow me whole.  I spent recesses for the next few weeks inside the classroom or in the library, reading books and making every effort to escape my classmates.  They would find me, though, and the chanting would begin, until I think finally some teachers and playground duties cracked the whip and the taunting stopped. 

By the time I started my first menstrual cycle in junior high I knew WAY better than to tell anyone.

Of course, it wasn't easy to hide those bulky kotex pads that you had to pin inside of your underwear.  It would have been less obvious to wear a diaper.  Fortunately by then, most of us girls were menstruating and the girls that weren't didn't want to make it obvious that the rest of us were more "mature" than they were, so they kept their mouths shut.   We were all old enough to be horribly embarrassed by our rapidly changing bodies, and topics of menstruation and "female things" were mercifully left untouched.  Besides, there were plenty of other things to find fault with.

Thankfully I've recovered from the horror of those early days of development.  I've learned to appreciate my bosom and to not feel embarrassed when other people (visibly, verbally, whatever) appreciate it too.

Two weeks ago my daughter came home from her dad's wearing a cute new outfit.  The top has patterned sleeves and a hoodie, but the part over her chest and torso are thin white cotton.  Looking at her twirl and preen in front of the mirror, I was smiling under my hand when the awful realization struck me.    I wanted to throw up.

My baby girl needs a bra.

Its different for her, thankfully.  She's not the first one in her class, not by far, and the selection of bras for budding girls is by far superior than what we had available to us thirty-odd years ago.

We went shopping.  She picked out three - one gray, one pink, one turquoise.  She looks adorable.  Not once has she come home in tears having been teased by her peers for wearing one.

Do you know what's more traumatic than being teased for wearing a bra to school?

Being the mother of a girl who is now old enough to need a bra.

 

I get to keep them

I had a long overdue visit to the Dermatologist today.  About six years overdue, honestly.  I've had two precancerous moles removed in years prior, and since I've moved to the land of everlasting UV rays I've been terribly negligent about following up. 

I have a standard list of responses I know I'll have to cycle through at least once every visit:

1.  Yes, I know my skin is dry.  My skin is always dry.

2.  No, I don't have a "skin care routine."    No, I don't have time for a routine.  Shut up already.  I know my skin is dry.

3.  Yes, those certainly ARE a lot of tattoos.   That?   Its a Claddagh.  Claddagh.    Its an Irish thing.  No, they didn't hurt all that much.

4.  No, I don't want to buy your $40 teeny weensy tube of super duper exfoliating spf 150 perfecting skin cream. 

It wasn't all that bad, though.  Dr. Smith was rather cute and funny, and he very kindly took care of the small broken veins next to my nose for nothing more than the cost of the tears it brought to my eyes when he zapped them.  He did go on rather monotonously about my dry skin, but I'm used to that, so it didn't bother me all that much.  Best thing though was that I didn't have to give up any of my moles to the scalpel today.  As I've written before, I'm not real big on needles OR blood, so any day I don't have to consciously avert my eyes I chalk it up as a win.

He asked me how often I wore sunscreen.  I asked him if "almost never" was a good answer, for which I received a withering glare. 

Sunscreen. 

I was a sun worshipper.  A sun worshipper who turned into a dirt worshipper and an outdoorswoman who could give a crap about whether her nails are clean or her skin has small pores and looks young.  Sunscreen just seems like a good way to waste an opportunity to be outside and turn brown.   The last thing I want to do in the summer, when its 95F is to put on long sleeves and a hat for a trail ride.  I'm not really keen on resembling Moist from Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog, the supervillain whose superpower gives him the inside track on sweaty palms and drippage. 

And yet...

I got to keep my moles today.  And when I look at my beautiful kids, with their clear, soft, white skin, I think maybe its time for me to start modeling better habits. 

I like my moles.

Heavy

Some days the weight of it all becomes unbearable. 

Its not just the things that are unique to my situation, though those are a large part of the heaviness.  Living one paycheck away from God only knows what kind of financial disaster may befall is scary.  Looking at the half-ton of hay left in the barn and Christmas rushing at me on the calendar and knowing the old gelding needs his teeth floated and my daughter wants to sign up for basketball and my life insurance premium is coming due and my son needs interventions and god, the house needs cleaning and things need fixing and I need a haircut and I forgot my meds and we're out of groceries and and and...makes my heart want to thump right out of my chest and go careening madly down the street.  There's the faces of my kids and the other inmates at the zoo who all need some portion of time and attention, which becomes harder to give the more stressed out and tired I get.  There's the ungodly amount of work waiting for me at my desk and the burden of finding a new hire before the job kills me.  There's the worrying about so many things and so many people.

There's the stuff that we all go through - am I doing the right things with my kids?  Setting the right examples?  When I make decisions about life, career, finances, am I making the right ones?  Am I OK with my loved ones?  Am I OK with God?  AM I DOING THIS RIGHT? 

So.

Thursday I will cook a big ass turkey and all the trimmings and I will sit down at the table with my kids and my ex husband (yes, we do holidays together) and I will try, for at least one day, to put these things out of my mind and remember to be damned grateful for all the things that I DO have and stop worrying about the things I don't.

I have parents who support me in so many ways you can't even imagine.  Who love and listen and care and give, time and money and hugs and words.

I have beautiful, amazing children.  Children who are funny and smart and creative and kind.  Children who are sensitive and special and miraculous.  Children who out of the blue will come up to me and squeeze me around the middle and tell me they love me "more than the whole everything."

I have friends who love me.  Friends that come get me with their rig so I can ride my horse somewhere outside of my own pasture.  Friends who drive cross country to see me.  Friends who take me out to listen to a band when I'm so stressed out I can't breathe.  Friends who send me funny emails and make me laugh.  Friends who pray for me all the time.  Friends who find little ways to pick up some of the balls I drop. Friends who live in the box on my my desk, that share their daily struggles and joys and who listen to mine.  Friends who write comments here and other places that show me they are listening and that they care. 

I have these furballs, big and small, who bring meaning and joy to my life.   The warmth and weight of the purring cat on my lap, the dogs curled around my chair as I type, the horses who rumble and look happy when I emerge from the house.  My horses who let me hug them and hang on them and who put their soft noses near my face and breathe their horsey breath on me.  My silly little chickens who follow me around whenever I'm out by the barn and who give me breakfast almost every day.

And I realize that sometimes the heavy thing that I feel is not the burden of responsibility, but a large, solid blanket of love and support that wraps me up and helps me carry the weight of all the other things. 

Kicked.

Out, that is.  Out of aftercare.  I knew it was coming, was trying to stay ahead of the curve but they beat me to it.

As time went by it was becoming painfully obvious that the hubbub and chaos of a large group aftercare program was not the right environment for my highly sensitive son.  I had hoped that the medication we just started him on would help, but it's still the same story, every single day.  Hitting.  Oppositional.  Can't sit still.  Won't participate.  Refuses to cooperate.  Runs out the door.

I start interviewing home care candidates tomorrow.  I can't afford it, but I hear that if I just leave him home alone for six hours with scissors and a hand grenade I'm probably crossing some sort of legal boundary, so home care it is.

Times like these I realize I need a wife to stay home and watch my kids.  Because, you know, the applicants are just lining up by the droves to get involved with the codependent, opinionated half-crazy middle-aged woman and her two non-neurotypical kids.  Can't you hear my phone ringing off the hook with all the guys asking me on a date?  No?  Yeah, you probably hear the same dead silence I do. Oh well, I suck at relationships anyway.

I'm ok.  Or at least, I will be.  So will C.  We just have some work to do to get there.

 

On friends and gay teen suicides and other random things

I haven't written a blog post in so long you probably all thought I'd skipped town with a hot young Flamenco dancer.  You did, didn't you?  Admit it.

I didn't mean to take a vacation from blogging, but honestly, I didn't have much to say.  My friend Jaimee, the original vagabond, finally showed up on my doorstep after a meandering drive West from New Jersey.  I wasn't sure when she'd arrive or how long she'd stay.  Unfortunately it was horrible timing work-wise, so I couldn't really take any days off.  When I was home and got done slogging through all the other stuff I needed to do, the last thing I wanted to do was sit at my computer when I could be spending time with one of the most lovely people on the planet.

When you're me, or when you're like me, friendships and people aren't easy.  As Jaimee would say, I'm crunchy on the outside but the crunchy layer is only there to mask my soft nougaty center.  I'd like to think that as I get older I get more comfortable with who I am and less afraid to show my feelings, but I'm sure I'm not as far along that path as I'd like to be.  People scare me.  I don't trust easily, and I have a terrible phobia of being made to look ridiculous.  The end result is that I will twist myself into the most convoluted of knots to avoid allowing anyone to see how sensitive I truly am. 

Jaimee is one of those people that can get along with just about anyone.  She's part tree hugger, part hippie chick, part beautiful, sophisticated center of attention at parties and she can put on a dress and heels and have every guy in the room wishing she'd dance with him.  In many ways you would think that we have nothing in common aside from our mutual love of nature and the outdoors.  When I left New Jersey for Washington Jaimee gifted me with a beautiful necklace - a Yin/Yang symbol made of a white and a black pearl on a silver circle.  She told me that she thought it was symbolic of our friendship. 

What we found, though, when we were comfortable with each other to actually talk about the important stuff, is that we are inwardly very much alike.  She's just far better than I am at masking her vulnerability.

So we've been hanging out a bit the last week and a half.  We didn't *do* much, really, just sort of hung around.  Sadly I was unable to convert her into a Cowgirl.  I like her anyway.

 

It was good times. 

[email protected][email protected][email protected][email protected][email protected]~

On the home front, C started medication two weeks ago.  We've been gradually increasing dosage, and he's been doing better.  He had two days last week that he didn't get written up at aftercare, which was a first.  He's still apparently not doing all that great fitting into the routine in Kindergarten, or at least that's what the prinicipal observed to me, since his teacher hasn't communicated a damn thing.  I requested last Friday that I get an email from his teacher just letting me know what kind of a day he had - even just a sentence or two so that I could communicate that to his doctor.  Its Thursday.  Guess how many reports I've gotten from his teacher?  Yeah.  I requested the IEP testing be conducted and that's underway.  I know a bit more now than I did when this started with A a few years ago.  I now understand that the IEP is not only to address cognitive function but life-skills as well.  So even if the testing shows no cognitive impairment, under the I.D.E.A. he is still entitled to assistance in social and life skills. 

And because I'm in a good mood at the moment, I'll refrain from discussing the nightmare arguments I've had with the insurance company over coverage and refills. 

I have friends and acquaintances I've met who are very anti-medication, and friends who are pro-medication except when it comes to their own children.  Lest anyone think that my very first avenue of approach is to medicate, let me clarify a few things.

From my perspective, medication isn't always a requirement when behavioral problems are present.  As an adult with ADHD, I'm not even certain that medication is a necessity for all children who have the disorder.  I had no idea I had ADHD until I was almost 40 years old.  I spent my whole life learning how to live with it with no pharmaceutical help whatsoever.  It CAN be done...but I can tell you from experience that it's not easy. 

When it came to my own children, my first steps were to find out what was wrong and to understand how much it was a problem.  We tried things prior to going the medication route, and honestly, I'm almost sorry we waited as long as I did.  My daughter's quality of life before Focalin and Lamictal was so awful compared to how it is now that there I times I feel guilty for not pursuing it sooner.   We actually waited a little bit longer to medicate C than we did with his sister.  His issues have manifested much differently, and I wasn't really certain how he would react to a school environment. 

For my family, medication has made a colossal difference.  But I also respect that it is not the avenue of choice for every family.  At the best, though, I hope that parents of children who have ADHD, Bipolar illness, Anxiety disorder or any other neurological disorder that affects corporate governance and cognitive function will at least consider looking into medication. 

I've heard so often, "Medication just turns your kid into a zombie."  I can't promise that every medication out there won't turn your kid into a zombie -  but I can tell you that there are very likely many that won't.  We did find one medication that had results we disliked - weight gain, general listlessness - and very few positive results, so we discontinued it very quickly and found something that worked better.  I can't imagine any parent that wants their child to be a zombie.  I mean, can you imagine how hard it is to clean all of those brains out of their school clothes? 

 

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Finally, if you've stuck with me this far, I will weigh in on the hot topic of the news, blogosphere and twitterverse this week - suicide amongst gay teens.

It is distressing and disheartening that even with all we know now about sexual orientation being an integral part of a person's hardwiring, with LGBT stars living open lives, with television shows and movies and reality shows either featuring LGBT cast or at least having them as key cast members.  Unfortunately our growing awareness and acceptance hasn't reached every family, particularly people in small, conservative towns, and the social conservatives among us have only stepped up the hate rhetoric in response to such wide acceptance. 

I hope that the hard of heart among us will be moved by the recent attention to this issue, that anyone who is a parent or an aunt, uncle, grandparent, teacher, classmate, or spiritual leader will read the following statistics and if they have been unsupportive before, will mend their ways:

According to a recent study, LGBT teens who have experienced rejection from their family are

• 8.4 times more likely than their non-LGBT peers to attempt suicide;
• 3.4% more likely to use drugs; and
• 3.4 times more likely to engage in unprotected sexual activities than their peers who have received family acceptance and support.

There are people who want to argue that the bible preaches against homosexuality.  I'm no biblical scholar, and I won't pretend to be.  There are plenty of respected scholars out there, though, who have researched the etymology and original context of the earliest writings the bible was translated from, and who have concluded that the writers may have been speaking about something entirely differently than the current commonly accepted meaning.  Issues of biblical scholarship aside, as a Christian, I find that my understanding of God and Christ are so much bigger than what one can find in a book.  If you want to see the love of Christ in living color, all you have to do is look at the eyes and hearts of the people around you.  In my belief system, each and every one of us is a child of God and each and every one of us is loved equally.  I could say more about my opinion of people who aren't biblical scholars, have never researched its many translations or read all the many versions and scholarly treatises regarding it, but are absolutely willing to take the word of some pastor or religious commentator that it is the unequivocal word of God and only the one translation they're reading from is the "right" one, but I won't.  It would be a waste of breath.

Science has taught us that being gay is not a choice, that it is the way people are born.  How can it be a sin to be born gay?  Seriously.  God doesn't make those kind of mistakes.  If God thought being gay was sinful, people wouldn't be born that way. I am so tired of Christians who need to feel morally superior to other people.  Stop being so damned judgmental, will you?  Your hatred and fear are, literally, killing our teenagers. 

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 And finally, in other news, the chicken is off the nest and happily wandering around the yard eating worms like all good chickens should.

I know this was long.  I'm sorry.  I missed you.  How have you all been?

 

Landscape

Sometimes in this world of special needs, the landscape is barren and dry.  I feel as if I am stumbling through the desert alone, hot sun beating down relentlessly and without mercy, lips cracking and throat screaming for just a sip of cool water.

Sometimes it is a landscape black, full of despair, trees gnarled and twisted, monstrous and looming.  My heart pounds with fear and every path before me seems fraught with danger.

But there are times when the trees are full and verdant, fingers of sunlight stream through the dense leaves and joy and peace overwhelm. Those are the good days, when my children and I are in sync, when the gears mesh and for once we have a day where everyone is relatively happy, where there aren't constant crises and fights and broken things.  A day where children are playing happily with one another.  A day when the hugs come easy and the tears never fall.

There are times when I encounter another in my landscape who lives in this same place, and we connect, embrace, offer love, empathy, a shoulder or an ear.  

Being the parent of special needs kids is a lonely road sometimes.  When most of the parents you know in your neighborhood and at your childrens' schools have neurotypical children, its easy to feel the odd man out.  Easy to feel the eyes staring at you when you arrive to sign our your child who has spent the day being inappropriate and sometimes even violent with other children and teachers.  Its easy to feel like no one understands you or gets what you're going through.  Its easy to take a walk through that door with the sign "Martyrs enter here" hanging on it.   What's hard, sometimes, is accepting help.  Accepting love.  Accepting anything other than fear and recrimination and self-hatred.  Because even when you know better, its hard not to wonder what you did wrong, why your children should suffer simply because their parents and their parents' parents genetics have combined to give them a horrible combination of biological and neurological time bombs.

Its not easy to look at reports about your child that say things like "does not socialize with other children."  "Does not appear to be engaged in what we are learning most of the time."  "Pretended to cut throat with scissors and waved scissors at other children."  "Throws books and kicks chairs."  "Hits other [children]."  "Not sure he hears directions."

Not easy.

But there are still going to be days when my landscape is full and verdant.  Days when I encounter others on my path who will give me what they can, give of their love and experience.  And we will keep pushing forward, no matter what.  Quitting isn't possible.  Surviving isn't optimal.  Succeeding is the place where I accept limitations, celebrate any victory no matter how small, connect with my children and with other people, advocate effectively and where we make progress, even if it's just an inch at a time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

To all of you who continue to reach out in love and empathy via comments and email, Facebook and Twitter:  Thank you.  I need you.  Keep doing exactly what you're doing, because your words and your help mean so much. 

And to my Mom, who is a frequent helper on this crazy, twisted path:  I love you.  You are everything I ever needed in a mother and I don't know what I'd do without you.  Thanks from the bottom of my heart for your listening, your shoulder, your busy hands and your gentle heart.

Reparations

"I don't want to spend my whole life down on my knees

Just fixing what I've broke."

- Hem, The Pills Stopped Working from Funnel Cloud, 2006

What are your regrets in life? What are the things you did in your past that hurt another person that they either never forgave you for or for which you never made amends?  You know, the unresolved ones.

When I left my first husband there was no awful thing that he'd done wrong, no infidelity (on his part), no lying, no abuse, nothing.  I went through a lifequake of epic proportions when I found my birthfamily and pretty much fell off a cliff.  I didn't want anything to do with anyone, didn't want to work, didn't want to be married, didn't want to have majored in English, wanted my whole life back so I could do it over and be who I finally thought that I was.  The best I could do was end what I came to realize was a marriage of incompatible people and try again. 

In retrospect, I was incredibly selfish and immature.  Maybe we *were* incompatible, but how would I know?  I didn't try.  I believe he will never forgive me for it.  I don't believe he has to.  Its not a requirement.  And I also believe there is nothing in this world that I can do to make amends for shattering his life.  I can apologize.  I can say it was all my fault, that he did nothing wrong.  But I can never, ever fix it.

Should I have to?

12 years later, he sends me an email to let me know the dog we had together has passed away, as he did last year when one of the cats died.  And I let him know about a mutual friend who passed.  We are polite, we don't ask questions or talk of personal things, but at least we are polite.  There is no meanness, no need to dredge up painful pasts.  I'm comfortable with that.

I remember a friend I had, she was a very needy friend and very controlling.  We had entered a contest together, the Milk Carton Derby during Seafair.  We didn't win the judging, but we did win a random drawing for two tickets on Continental Airlines, anywhere they flew domestically.  For me, it was great timing.  I was planning on going to Boston with my rowing club to compete in the Head of the Charles.  I wasn't sure how I would be able to afford to get there, so this ticket was like a gift straight from God.  My friend, though, thought that we should use our tickets to go somewhere TOGETHER.  I offered a compromise, I would take extra vacation days while in Boston and after the race was over, she and I could do some touring around New England.  It would be in the fall, the best time of year to be in the Northeast. 

My mother's cousin's widow lived in Boston, in a very fine old neighborhood, in an enormous house.  It was three full stories with a basement, she came from old money.  She very generously offered her home to me and any of the other rowers who needed a place to stay. 

My friend wasn't interested in this shared housing, and she tried to find herself a hotel room in Boston.  She could not find any hotel that wasn't already booked.  She called me, angry and demanding a solution.  I said I hadn't realized that so many people would be in town for the race, maybe she wanted to change her mind and stay at my relative's house?  She SHRIEKED at me.  "People aren't in town for your FUCKING RACE, you idiot, they're there for a convention.  Your stupid race isn't that important!!  And no, I don't want to stay at your cousin's house with a BUNCH OF FUCKING DYKES!!!!"  And hung up on me.

She never spoke to me again.  I left her a couple of half-hearted messages, hoping to patch things up, but she never returned my calls, and frankly it was a relief.  (And just for the record, I had a WONDERFUL time in Boston.  We took a silver medal in the women's 8, and a couple of us rented a car and drove to Vermont and did a bunch of sightseeing and had a wonderful vacation. SO THERE.)

I have wondered about her since then, whether she still hates me.  What she would say if we just randomly ran into one another at the grocery store or at a restaurant.

Would she expect me to fall on my knees and apologize?  Would I want to?  

I wouldn't expect it of her, even though I thought her behavior was horribly rude and selfish.  She probably thought that I was the one being selfish.  And rude.  I think where the disconnect happened was that she had very high expectations of me, expectations I wasn't going to fulfill.  That was the beginning of a painful breach that has never healed.

Another person comes to mind, a man who, though I didn't date him for long, was a big part of creating the codependent monster I eventually became.  He was an alcoholic, much older than me.  In the months that we were together, I became unbalanced as I tried to fix him, control him.  The relationship was one of the worst in my life.  He was always at the bar, drinking.  He never came home when he said he would.   He would pick on me for my clothing or my weight or my hair.  I was never good enough.  He cheated on me.  He gave me an STD.  After I finally grew the ovaries to throw all of his belongings in black plastic garbage bags and put them in his car, I spent years being furious with him.  I wanted him to SEE how wrong he had been.  To acknowledge it.  TO GROVEL ON THE GROUND AND BEG MY FORGIVENESS.  To change. 

The things that went wrong with J and I, for a while I did the same thing.  And even when he owned his part in things, I still felt unsatisfied.  I was still angry and I wanted someone to PAY.  To grovel.  To fix what they had broken.

As time passes, I realize that I do not have that right.  A person can only apologize for what they own as a wrong.  If there are reparations to be made, if they have the ability to make them, ok.  But most often, in friendships and interpersonal relationships, there is nothing the other person is going to be able to do that makes you feel better.  That part, the getting over the anger part, that's up to ME.  And damn, that's harder than hell to do.  To stop expecting people to fix the broken thing in me.   Its happening, though.  I think I'm starting to understand the concept of accepting responsibility for my own repair.  At the same time, learning to stop being endlessly angry with the people I feel have hurt me.  Being mad isn't going to make them admit their offenses.  Being mad isn't going to make them sorry.  I need to let it go, write it on a piece of paper and burn it in the fireplace.  Cry my tears and let the river flow away, taking my pain and anger and hurt with it.

Because I too would like the forgiveness of others.  I dont' want to, cannot, spend my whole life groveling for forgiveness, trying to fix the broken parts of other people.  Its not my job.

Someday, I think, if I work on this hard enough, I really will know peace.  Someday.

Love/Hate

Being an adult with ADHD brings with it an array of nuance to life, sometimes funny, sometimes painful, sometimes hilarious, sometimes excruciating.

I came home tonight to a letter from my FlexPlan coverage asking me to provide a receipt for a prescription that was purchased four months ago.

The likelihood that I would have managed to retain a receipt for more than three days is absolutely ludicrous.  My mother?  Would still have the receipt carefully filed in a waterproof-fireproof-bombproof cabinet TEN YEARS LATER. 

But not me.

So I can plan at the expiration of the 30 grace days they’ve given me to reimburse my Health Care Flex Plan 80-odd dollars for a prescription I purchased.  You know, for my HEALTH CARE.  Which my FLEX PLAN IS SUPPOSED TO BE PAYING FOR.  Which flex plan I am paying into with my own money. 

Which somehow in ADHD world makes PERFECT SENSE.

Explain, please.

I got a call yesterday afternoon at work.  A preemptive call.  The one you get when your child's care provider is pretty sure your child is going to mention something and they don't want you to be surprised.

"In case C__ mentions that he rode the white bus today, the school failed to put him on the bus to [daycare center] and we had to go pick him up.  Well, there were actually three children that didn't get put on the bus."

Despite the detailed email with his schedule which I sent to his principal and his teacher.

Despite the sticker I put on his shirt that morning that said "C rides the bus to [daycare center] after school today."

Despite my several calls to the transportation department.

Despite my in-person visit with the office and the assurance that the school was going to speak with the transportation department.

Despite EVERYTHING.

I'm done.  Up to HERE, I'm done.  I've gone beyond hot anger to ice cold fury. 

The superintendent of the district will be getting a call from me today.  Rest assured.