It took me most of the week to get myself balanced again after visiting my folks and family back home. It was an emotional trip in many ways, and over just two days, I went through feelings of anger, helplessness, joy, pride, frustration, love and anxiety. I don't think I had quite realized how bad things were at home, what with my sister being pregnant and now left alone, and my folks having to work more and help more, as a result of that. One thing I often forget when I go home, is that I'm an adult now - I may be a dysfunctional and struggling such, but I have integrity. I try to look at things from afar, to get a scope of things, I try to put myself in other's shoes, to be aware of the nature of their pain. I want to help, but there isn't a hell of a lot I can do from here. There wasn't a hell of a lot I could do while I was down there, either, really. Mainly because I was a bit of a wreck. I played with and looked after my niece, and that was the best part of the trip, I love that brilliant, smart little kid. Although perhaps not the most productive part. That was something else entirely.
I don't exactly remember the last entry I wrote about the ADHD/ADD thing, but let me just mention that for a bit. While I was home I finally worked up the courage to go talk to my mom about it, and ask her to help me with some of the forms I got to fill out. I had carefully rehearsed what to say during my six hour drive down there, a perfect speech, honest and from the heart, rational and motivated by fact and observation. But of course, when it was time to actually say this to my mom I forgot every word of it, and something like this went down instead:
"What was that form you needed help with?"
"Here, it's a... I'm going to this psychologist and I need to fill this out..."
"Why are you going to a psychologist?"
"I'm being investigated for ADHD..."
"Why would you?"
"Because... I think that's why everything was always so hard for me."
This was nowhere near the speech I had so carefully prepared, and thus I felt like I wasn't making myself justice. But I still rather wanted to tell her face to face, than on the phone, and I pulled that off, at least. She was skeptical at first but eventually started asking me questions about it and as I answered those best I could, I felt like she began to connect the dots together. What seemed to be the deciding factor in this was when she asked me if Johan thought the same as I did and I said yes. Yes because he is the one person who sees me daily, and he knows my behavior like the back of his hand. Then I pretty quickly detoured from the subject again, because I didn't wanna make this visit all about me, it was, and ought to be, about them, my sister and niece in particular.
The day before we had this conversation my mom was very angry with me, saying I had no idea how hard it's been on them, and many other things. I'm usually able to act very controlled and calm during arguments with her because I know that's the best way to make her rationalize, but she chose a bad time to argue and I couldn't control myself. I said that I knew it's been hard, I realize it's been hard, that's why I'm here, I'm here to help and to make everyone feel a little better. It's pretty much always been my job to do this, until I... until I moved away to develop my own life. I had been driving for 6 hours during a heatwave to get there and I wasn't happy to get yelled at for asking how I could help. But I managed not to say anything about how I'd been feeling. Anyway, all I'm saying is that although they think I have no idea how their lives have been (which I do, I can't stop thinking about them, worrying for them, I've called and texted twice as frequently, even, just to make sure they feel like someone cares), they have no idea how my life has been, either. With my family, it's always been OK to be upset or stirred up by external influences; but internal influences, like my ADHD, well that's just a struggle you pull through, that's just something you bite into and endure. I don't think they realize how much introspection can fuck you up, even if they all do introspection, they rarely turn the radar onto themselves. It's simply hard to try and justify any kind of mental instability to them without any concrete reason to point at. I guess what they're going through right now might be an exception from that, though. It's hard to believe one person's wrongdoing can affect several others, so severely; it's even harder to understand how this one person doesn't see this extent of those actions. There are no words for that betrayal. It's the kind of letdown that would spark a war in Game of Thrones. Luckily, our House has a saying, just like the Houses in the books, and it's a saying wise to remember, if you ever decide to cross us:
We are strong. We stick together. We never give up.
Seems like suitable words to close this entry with. See ya around.
POET IN THE JAR
