This isn't what I was planning to write about for my next post, but these are some things which have been playing on my mind increasingly of late.
Also, this is not in fact a typical day in my life, so I probably should have titled this something different, but here we are. I sort of just wanted to get down a list of things which I routinely experience.
Finally, I can't imagine anyone will actually be interested to read this. But then again, perhaps someone will, and perhaps even someone who's also suffering, and maybe they'll feel less alone as a result.
I've written before about some of the issues I'm dealing with. I suspect I've undiagnosed dyspraxia, or possibly ADHD.
I've always been clumsy and excessively disorganized, with terrible balance (we've always joked that it's my tiny feet that cause me to teeter and fall down a lot, but that's not really what it is).
I hadn't ever been able to learn sports or to dance or a musical instrument as a child because I just couldn't coordinate my digits/limbs sufficiently.
I wasn't able to learn to drive as my brain couldn't translate all the manual skills into muscle memory, no matter how long I practiced.
I don't have a diagnosis (just generalised anxiety and depression, as things stand), but I've always experienced the symptoms of emotional dysregulation and rejection sensitive dysphoria.
I also have physical ill-health, including a condition which leaves me tired all the time (and I have frequent dizzy spells). Oh, and insomnia.
Every day begins with a struggle to wake up and get up. Every day. Latterly I work from home and I thank the universe for it (and long may it last). [I really don't know how I ever used to manage to get myself up, groomed (-ish, anyways), and commuted to work Mondays through Fridays.] And then once I'm up I berate myself for not being able to get moving every morning. Every morning. And then I have to put my perceived failings to the back of my mind to try and work, or at the weekends to try and crack on with housework.
Now and again someone will say something to me like: why don't you just get out of bed when your alarms first goes off? Or, why don't you just go to bed a bit earlier? I wish I could force those people to live in my world for just a single day.
I spend my days reproaching myself for moving and acting like a 90 year old, when I'm half that age. But when you can be hit with dizzy spells at any given moment (oh, and you're a clumsy bugger, too) you learn to move very deliberately.
We no longer have glass drinking vessels in our home as I've smashed them all over time (not deliberately, or by throwing them or anything -- usually it's while doing the washing up, I'll drop them on one another, or smash them into something while turning to place a wet item to drain). Instead, we have bamboo beakers. I even managed to break one of those, once, so we're down to just 3 left out of a set of 4.
Crockery gets smashed frequently as well. Including the teapot which I'd inherited from my late mother-in-law.
Although I mostly try to move very deliberately, I sometimes forget, or if other people are also moving around me I feel under pressure to go more quickly so as not to hold people up.
That's usually when I'll fall, turn an ankle or bump my hips or thighs into something, leaving bruises, occasionally scratches. Sometimes it's my arms that bump into doorhandles. Sometimes it's my head.
No, my spouse doesn't hurt me, he's not that type of guy. In my case, I really did walk into a door, or some shit.
I also lose things. Gloves on buses, hats on trains, umbrellas in shops. Not it isn't a Dr Seuss rhyme, it's my life. Wallets at least every other year (I've given up on replacing all the cards, so now I do without loyalty cards -- even though we could honestly do with the discounts etc.)
Keys and phones... [Frantically touching wood!] I've managed not to outright lose these in some years now, but they're frequently mislaid around the home and even outside of it, like on the lawn. I use Google to ring my phone at least once per day lately (I can't just ring it from the house phone, as I never remember to put the ringer back on in a morning after it's been on silent overnight. Worse still, sometimes the battery is flat because I forgot to charge it!)
In a morning I'm meant to leave up to 4 hours between taking my medication and eating, as some foods interfere with the absorption of my synthetic thyroxine. (That's IF I remember to take my medication when I wake up in the morning, which is getting increasingly rare.)
I used to struggle with this interval, as if I don't eat within about an hour of waking I can get really nauseous. Latterly, though, I've been managing to do it (most days), and I'm doing intermittent fasting (because I feel like I've tried everything else).
But my hyperfocus then means that once I get started on work I don't remember to eat anything. For hours.
I frequently take my 20 minute lunch break somewhere between 15:00 and 16:00 (sometimes even later). This isn't ideal, as I can sometimes get light-headed without any food intake. I can also get irritable, too.
I also don't remember to drink enough fluids, and I can end up fractionally dehydrated.
I don't take screen breaks, and by mid-afternoon my eyes are so badly strained I'm struggling to keep them open to keep looking at my screen, in fact they outright hurt (and sometimes I get headaches).
Part of my role at work includes a level of customer service. My neurodivergence [whatever flavour it turns out to be] means that my mind works in a very particular way. Receiving phone calls and Teams messages scattered throughout my day interrupts destroys my focus to a disproportionate degree.
It's been known for me to discard a piece of work I've spent 45 minutes on following a series of interruptions, because it just seems easier to start again from scratch rather than try to get back to where I was.
Again, I don't know how I used to cope when we were working in an office. Actually, I do. I recall having to retreat to the toilet cubicle multiple times throughout the day, not because of a need to pee but rather because I needed to reset. I wore earplugs -not earbuds, actual earplugs- wherever possible due to the chatter of colleagues which continually split disrupted my focus.
Even working from home, I sometimes have days when I have such a long string of interruptions that it just somehow throws a spanner in my brain and at a certain point my brain just shuts pretty much down.
I simply can't get my nervous system to reset, and calm down, and settle back into some work. Those days, I have to just admit defeat, give up on whatever I was planning to do, or working on, and just do some really light & undemanding work the rest of that day, such as tickbox exercises.
I structure my work week very heavily, because it's what I've found works best over the years. But those neural pathways are so ingrained, now, that if I have to do something different on a given day than what I'd usually be doing -say, because of a deadline- then I struggle significantly.
Sometimes I simply cannot drag my thought processes from what I'd usually be doing that day. I'll try to do it, but my mind just keeps going repeatedly back to whatever it knows I "should" be doing that day, and won't focus on the other thing.
I think I'm perceived as rude, because if someone is trying to speak to me while I'm in the middle of doing something I struggle -again- to tear my mind from what I'm doing to what they're saying.
It's been known for me to turn my head in the direction of the person speaking, but with my eyes still firmly on my monitor screen, like some sort of a cartoon character!
When I'm stressed or overwhelmed, my cognitive function becomes impaired (or, rather, more impaired than usual). I can stare at a screen or at a set of closed kitchen cupboard doors for a disproportionate length of time, because I just can't seem to force my brain to fathom out what steps I need to be performing.
This worries me, because I recall when I did Dementia Friend training, one of the examples they discussed was difficulty with the steps to make a cup of tea. I frequently have difficulty with the steps to make a cup of tea? Do I, therefore, have early onset dementia?!
My motor skills develop what I think of as a sort of 'stutter'. I'll start to reach out with my hand, stop and draw my hand back, and then repeat this action over and over multiple times.
Or I'll stand up and start to walk in a direction, only to start to walk in the opposite direction after half a step because I've thought of something else. And then back the first direction again, and so on & so forth.
We joke that I'm like a video game character that has developed a glitch. But although I make light of it sometimes, it upsets me deep down and I get frustrated with myself.
The stuttering hand thing worries me sometimes, especially during cooking - sharp knives, hot pans etc and a wildly stuttering hand: not a great combination. Not that I can manage to cook often as I'm not a natural chef or someone who finds it enjoyable. Instead, it stresses me and is guaranteed to provoke concerning occurrences.
I get a level of verbal aphasia when I'm stressed or sleep-deprived. Or rather, historically, I used to get it when I was stressed or sleep-deprived. Latterly, it is happening on a daily basis.
I frequently use the wrong words for things. I'm usually aware that I've done it after the fact (as far as I know, anyway!) Often the word I've used by mistake is similar. For example, I might say washing machine when what I meant was dishwasher.
Other times, I simply seem to stall part way through speaking a sentence. I might make a ridiculous noise, like a grunt or growl, when I realise I can't seem to force the end of the sentence out.
We often laugh about it, but then there have been other times when I've become so frustrated with myself that I've literally slapped my own face, hard.
This symptom is another thing which worries me. I'm sure I probably haven't suffered a mini-stroke or something without knowing it, but I can't help but worry.
Out of sight is out of mind, so -for example- documentation which comes through the post and gets put down on a pile gets forgotten about and never actioned. Even if it's important. Even if it's legal documentation.
It's not unusual for me to take a year or even eighteen months to get around to a task. Which -you can imagine- often creates problems.
For example, a faulty product which needs returned within 28 days. It won't get returned, and now we've got a defunct piece of clutter laying around our place.
And I can't part with said thing because it cost money. Maybe someone at the repair cafe can do something with it? Ha! Maybe so, IF I ever got around to actually showing up on the day it's taking place in my area (or any area, actually).
My family and friends all think I'm really thoughtless as I never remember birthdays or anniversaries.
And then sometimes out of the blue I'll get some new and weird symptom. Like last night, when I unexpectedly experienced an instance of trypophobia for the first time ever. And then I inexplicably laid in bed awake for hours -hours- trying to think of any and all objects in our home with clusters of little holes (there are almost none -- and anyway, why did my mind want to catalogue such things if it was feeling uncomfortable about similar ones? See, weird.).
I know I'll probably obsess about the above post for the rest of tonight, including overnight (for whatever weird reason).
My mind will be trying to think of other things which I wished I'd included in the above account (I'm sure there'll be some). Not that it matters, this is meant to be a bit of a flavour, not an exhaustive autobiographical volume of War and Peace or something. But my mind is a law unto itself.
My family thought it amusing when I recounted my efforts to count sheep to combat insomnia, but my sheep wouldn't behave themselves and balked & ran riot instead. And I get that the anecdote is amusing. But it is, in fact, also my life.
Ah, well.
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