It’s fucking crazy how a diagnosis can explain your entire life.

I really really wish I had known this about myself way earlier on.  I can’t get over how much time I feel that I’ve wasted. And I am still wasting. I should be done with school but I can’t stick with one thing long enough. This is the first full semester I’ve been on meds and therapy for this, and it’s the WORST I’ve ever done. I just want it to be next week so I can sleep. I started it it off so well, I was doing the best I’ve ever done, and then I fell behind and it spiraled. Blah, oh well.  I just have to keep on going I guess. I just feel so alienated.  I’ve cut out so many distractions in my life and stopped with the weekly hanging out with friends.  My life was filled to the brim and that’s why I had no time for anything. I keep alt-tabbing out of this..... I can’t take an adderall right now because I need to get sme sleep at some point. This post is intentionally stream-of-concsiousness.  This is how my brain is working right now.  And to a lesser extent most of the time.  Like, the hardest part of this, the part that really grates on me is that to most people, I just look lazy.  That couldn’t be further from the truth.  I never rest.  I am messy, yes.  I am late all the time, yeah.   I start a ton of things and never finish them.   These are all because I constantly have things going on. I have a lot of hobbies.  I have a lot of interests.  And lately, I’m learning to let go of some of them.  I’m getting rid of a lot of physical stuff, which is difficult, but I’ve decided I want to focus on music and school.  My other hobbies can take a back seat.  I don’t know, th hard part is that I do get lazy at times.  These past couple weeks all I’ve been doing is playing guitar and browsing porn.  Like, when something is important to me, I realize logically that it is, but my physiological response to that is to push it away and NOT worry...that is until it’s pressingly urgent and it needs to get done NOW. Even things I want to do.  It’s so easy to get caught up browsing on reddit or tumblr or whatever.  I want to live without a smart phone.  Immediate access to all the world’s knowledge is a curse.  It’s already hard enough for me to live in the moment.  I also attribute my lack of success this semester to my phone breaking and going weeks without one or a cheap old one that didn’t have these capabilities. Honestly, it was so freeing.  That is, until I got back to a computer and checked my email. Everyone expects you to be available 100% of the time now.  I’ve been in college 8 years, and I’ve seen the change.  It’s made EVERYONE so much more disorganized.   No one commits to anything.  Most people focus on dates or plans or things like that when they say that no one commits anymore, but what gets overlooked is how even in a professional setting, or academic, it’s  made it so it’s acceptable to be unprepared.  “I can send out a correction later.” “I will email you the solution.” “Oh, I’m not going to answer that right now, email me the question.” “Oh class I forgot to say that the cheat sheets for your exam cannot include worked examples.”  -paraphrased actual email I received at around 9 pm the night before an exam.  It’s so disrespectful of people’s time.  If this was work i would not be reading that off the clock, though I know a ton of people who do.  It’s stressful for people who are neurotypical even, but it’s so normalized these days that no one bats an eye.

It’s exhausting too.  I attended a lecture earlier this semester where I learned of studies that showed checking a text even, because your brain adjusts what it’s doing completley, even though it takes a few seconds, is magnitudes more taxing than simply focusing on the task at hand.  I just want my friends to understand I’m not avoiding anyone on purpose.  I just want my family to understand I am not lazy.