Effexor, again.

Yeah, I know. I'm getting side tracked. That will happen. I'm sure if ADD had been the "popular diagnosis" when I was a kid I'd have had docs shoving Ritalin at me by the bucket load. My Mom tells me that my piano teacher had particular frustration with me, because she'd be explaining something and I would, for all appearances, be totally somewhere else mentally. Then, she'd ask if I understood, and there was no doubt I'd taken in everything she'd been telling me. It was just that if I tried to focus on one single thing while she explained it, I couldn't do it.

All that is kind of ironic when you think about it -- the woman who is teaching me how to focus my attention on each hand separately, read two different musical clefs simultaneously, and eventually, when I'd grown a little more and could reach then, to get both feet involved in the activity as well. If anyone was asking me to scatter my attention, it was her.

Oh well. It served me well, sort of. I frustrated a lot more teachers than just her with my tendency to look totally bored with what was happening around me, especially in academic settings. The more I tried to focus on one single thing, the more everything just seemed to scoot around at the fringes of my ability to grasp and understand and apply.

This hasn't been taken away by all the meds, but it was blunted I think. At least, I feel very scattered. And if I don't have anything to do or think about, or a project lined up for a day, it drives me bonkers. It's a downer. I don't know what to do with myself. Again, I'm coming up against a part of me that is totally normal (I know this). It just seems MORE than it ever was, and I think maybe that's because I had "help" dealing with it the last few years.

This wasn't ever such a troublesome aspect of my personality/mentality to deal with -- not like my temper, which is still pretty scary. I can tell you the story about the Scaggy Biker and Gordy if you want later. Anyhow...the multiple mental tracks thing. I know I've always been like this. But now that it's been a little dull for a few years, it seems more distracting than anything, and I'm not sure how to readjust.

Kerry said that there are clinics that dispense methadone for the kind of withdrawals I've had...who bought off the FDA to get this one out there? I can see where it might have some uses, in cases where, as the crazymeds site says, you feel like whale shit on the bottom of the ocean. It could be good for that, but even then, I would think it would be a short term thing.

There's so much I want to do, discuss, read...it's overwhelming. I want to write -- finish the series on the matriarchs in my family, write about my experiences with Crohn's, write things that will help people learn to laugh at themselves before they go insane. I want to learn tai chi -- NOW -- I want to move, and be graceful, and controlled and precise, and I want to do it perfectly, and I want to add sword forms into my regimen. I want to take ballet again. I need to move, to be physical, to sweat and have my muscles aching and my feet hurting and KNOW in some tangible way that I'm here, and that I'll still be here tomorrow.

I want to read everything. Biology, chemistry, physics, philosophy, history, culture...single subjects make me antsy. I want to know, and I can't seem to make my brain settle down and be quiet. It's like being so hungry that your vision gets narrow and you start grabbing handfuls of whatever is close without really paying attention to what it is. I want to sit up all night surfing the net and finding out what I can find out.

I want to garden and clean and run errands and take care of all the crap that's wrong with the apartment and just take on the entire world all at once. I want to kick the shit out of the idiots and the creeps who I run into. I want to help the people that I can. I want to be perfect for Kerry -- a dynamo haus-frau who does everything perfectly. But I know I can't do that -- I'm not June Cleaver. Never have been never will be. It just doesn't do anything for me. It works for some folks, and that's great. But me? I'm just not built to live like that, even if we could get away with it. I'd be going crazy looking for things to do that had nothing to do with anything domestic. I'd probably be cooking up whiskey in a still out back, or making my own gunpowder and testing it out on the crackheads in the apartments behind us or something. That or the urban assault spud gun -- that's a napkin drawing that could become a reality all too easily if I were left to my own devices for too long.

You see, I could very easily be a danger to myself and others with my kind of energy. And I've always, always been like this. I just don't know how I dealt with it all the time before. School was never encompassing enough to really be helpful. I had to throw in ballet and all kinds of other stuff to get myself to feel productive and settled with myself. Otherwise, there was always a little part of me that sat there at the end of the day and said "you could have done more. You should have done this, or that, or the other thing. What the hell? Why didn't you do all three? You could have..."

And people wonder why I don't want kids. I'd be a disaster! I really don't think I could do that. Especially in the years before they start articulating opinions. Babies just don't do anything for me. I'd be running around with the thing in one of those yuppie slings that lets you hold the kid on your back, and I'd forget it was there, sit down and squash it or something. And that's probably the least I could do. Hopefully I'd be arrested for felony stupidity before I let things get too far.

And yet, that part of my mind is still yawning and half asleep, which is sort of a nervous thing. I mean, if it's this agitated now, what is it going to be like when it's all the way awake? Had it's shower, brushed it's teeth and is settling in with teh paper and a bagel and cream cheese before running out the door to do whatever it's going to do?