Getting a Little Personal Today

Yeah so I had this great idea I was going to make sure that I blogged regularly. Seems that I failed, almost epically!

But moving onward..
I thought today I would discuss a few things that aren’t in the realm of writing but in me personally.
I don’t know if I have mentioned it on the blog before, maybe in passing or joking but I am diagnosed with Anxiety Disorder and ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). I don’t have ADHD. I wish I had the hyper part cause maybe I could get things done, but alas I wasn’t graced with that part.
I’ve struggled with attention since I was a child, being a kid in the late 70s and 80′s we didn’t even discuss ADD, dyslexia was just starting to be acknowledged where I live. All I ever heard was “Kay would be a great student if she’d apply herself, if she’d pay attention she’d be a straight A student. She just doesn’t try hard enough.” Yeah I know that. I used to sit in class and think, “I am going to do better, I’m going to study, and get better grades and oohhhh look at that, five chapters later we’re going to talk about adverbs!”

Yep, that was my life. I was great at English. I was such a good reader in first grade that I tested into the third grade reading books. I was repeating the same reading books in 5 and 6th grade that I had done in 4th grade. I could read at a college level in 6th grade. I struggled all through school with getting things done. Even in my semi adult life I did.
Then when I was 31 I was diagnosed by a psychiatrist with ADD as well as the anxiety disorder.
The anxiety disorder is nuts. It really is. I would worry to the point I’d have a panic attack about my kids maybe leaving the stove on and the house blowing up. I’d worry about them walking to school to the point that I thought someone might run over them with a truck. I’d shake, couldn’t do anything until I knew they were okay and all the while in my head I’m saying “Hey you’re being dumb, stop worrying, this is pointless” and that other part of my brain was screaming. “YOU DON”T KNOW THAT?! ARE YOU INSANE? EVERYTHING IS UNSAFE!! OMG CALL HOME!!!”

Yeah that was my life. I couldn’t sleep and when I did I would wake up worrying. Between that and the ADD, I felt like my life was never mine. I was trying so hard to keep things together and failing miserably. To everyone I just looked unorganized and scatterbrained and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t make it better.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that depression is very common in people with AD (anxiety disorder) and ADD. I fell into that trap too.
You want so much to feel normal, to not worry, to not have your thoughts race in twenty directions at a time. You want to focus on things but you can’t. No matter how hard you try, you start to daydream, drift off to other places, you go over things you need to do that week, or what is in the house that needs cleaned, what clothes need washed tonight, what am I going to cook for dinner, dinner the other night was great when I went out with the kids, I wonder what the kids will be like when they grow up, I remember a cake I had for my fourth birthday, wow that’s crazy I was really young, now I can remember that cake but what was I supposed to get at the store later? Maybe I was supposed to get cake?
That is how my thought process worked and still does at times. I had no control over where my thoughts went or why they went there. Feeling that out of control of your thoughts leads to the depression. It’s hard to even explain to someone what it’s like for your mind to race, to go over ten subjects in the span of twenty seconds. It’s like your brain and thoughts go on autopilot and unless you grab them and reign them in you’re a passenger on the ride.
Thank heavens for the mental health field and the people who help the crazies like me (and I say that in a teasing manner.) I still struggle but the meds help a lot. Therapy too.
I still get a little bummed at times, and sometimes I just focus on some things and forget about other things I should be doing i.e. this blog.
I see it, I know I should do it but I go to log on and Facebook catches me, or the ever dreaded Tumblr. On a side note Tumblr is like crack for me, I swear I am on there and I lose hours of my life staring at cute men and funny memes. It’s an addiction. I highly recommend it and I warn you ahead of time of the addictive qualities.  BUT I LIKE ALL THE GORGEOUS MEN AND STUFF!!!!!

But I digress… again.
So that is kind of what happens when I don’t post on here regularly, it’s me just getting wrapped up in two million other things that probably don’t mean much at all. I let the thoughts and the distraction take me and then voila, it’s two weeks later and I haven’t posted anything.
I also hope that reading this you realize that people with ADD and Anxiety Disorder are normal folks who deal with some hard things. It’s crazy at times to have to struggle with the things I do, to wish so badly you could focus on something and yet you can’t. You try so hard to keep yourself in check but no matter what you do, it’s like your life just rushes out of control and you’re hanging on hoping it will stop long enough for you to catch your breath.
So yeah, I’m going to try and stay up on this blog but if you don’t see a post for a couple weeks, you can just figure Kay is on another of her distracted by the shineys in life phases and she’ll be back soon.
Please also feel free to comment, share your thoughts and also share this blog with anyone who might have the same things happening in their life so they understand that there are others out there and they aren’t alone.