Epiphanies are wonderful

Pure_joy_by_Ferruti

I've just gotten off the phone (well, Skype, but it's pretty much the same thing) with The Amazing Jennifer Priest. Why is she so amazing? Because in the space of an hour, she brought me up from exhaustion to excitement; from depression to delight; from gnarly to gnostic! During our Skype call, she led me toward an epiphany, and it's put me on the path to something great.

Full disclosure: I may have Adult Attention Deficit Disorder (Adult ADD). All my life, I've had difficulty concentrating, been easily distracted, have never had a moment when snatches of songs weren't running through my mind, was extremely forgetful ... and these things have hurt me. Just as an example, Jennifer gave me a mutually agreed-upon task to help me pursue some of my goals. But two weeks have gone by, and I haven't been able to do them. Last night, I realized that my biggest obstacle is, in fact, my brain. It just doesn't work properly. So I asked Jennifer if we could spend today's session discussing ways to fix that.

We began talking about the different drugs that people with my problem take to alleviate their symptoms. But she said something that hit me like a bolt from the blue. I mentioned that I'm always recycling old song lyrics, great bits of writing from books I've read, things people say that I found particularly clever ... and yet I can't remember to do a simple thing like turn off the garden lights at night before I go to bed. Jennifer said that that's because experiencing pleasurable things lights up the part of the brain that helps me learn and remember things. Things that are onerous, like household chores, or doing taxes, or any of a thousand things, just don't stick with me; in fact, I tend to postpone them, or outright avoid them.

She likened it to sitting in a boring business meeting. You might start to twiddle your thumbs, or drum on the desk, or play with your cellphone -- anything you can do that will add just the tiniest bit of enjoyment to the proceedings. Because without that extra stimulus, you might as well not even be there.

And that concept struck such a deep chord with me, it literally woke me all the way up, and I got really excited. Do you understand how amazing it is to have a big piece of mystery suddenly come loose and fall away, like icebergs calving in the arctic seas? A huge part of my life suddenly made sense! All my life I've been told that I had to pay closer attention, to work harder, to have the right attitude. But it seems that some peculiarity of my brain has made that near-impossible ... and more than that: there's a way to fix it.

Now, I should say that as a whole, I've always had a certain reservation when it comes to drugs of any sort. I'm wary of their effects and side effects, I've seen their abuse lead to the loss of friends and family members ... they're a loaded topic for me. So to consider that I might gain some benefit from taking some kind of pharmaceutical was a huge step for me. But I'm doing it. I'm going to make a call soon to put me on the track to 1) Get myself diagnosed, and 2) To get the treatment I need.

You may be thinking "But it seems so obvious; you need drugs, you go get drugs." But the problem has always been my broken brain. I would always think to myself "Oh, I just need to do this", but 5 minutes later, and it's gone. There have been moments when I've nearly wept, or screamed in frustration at my inability to understand the simplest ideas, or remember the most common sense steps. In a lot of ways, my mind has been my biggest enemy my whole life.

But The Amazing Jennifer managed to turn that around, too. She said that even given that hurdle, that obstacle, what I have managed to accomplish is that much more laudable. Look how far I've come, even with a broken brain: I've managed to keep my First Job in this horrible economy, and am maintaining two secondary jobs at the same time, both of which involve the regular application of my thoughts. I've stuck with my difficult living situation, when others might have cut and run. I can honestly say that I'm thankful that I have my willpower in place, because without it, I might have given up long ago.

Just think what I'll be able to do when I fix my brain!

So there you have it: working with The Amazing Jennifer has been the smartest thing I've ever done. Sure, these steps were always there for me to figure out on my own, but that's the point: I never had. It's taken an outside voice to help me put it all in context, and help me understand why my life is the way it is, and what to do about it.

I'm going to get better, you just wait and see. I'm going to astonish you all.

Today I don't need a replacement
I'll tell them what the smile on my face meant
My heart going boom boom boom
Hey, I said
You can keep my things, they've come to take me home
-- "Solsbury Hill", Peter Gabriel