Roller-coaster love …
From my previous post you’ll see that I went through a lot in the past few years. I got separated from my wife, started a divorce, lost my soulmate and hurt her badly. Worst of all, I just couldn’t really feel it sometimes and had just to little understanding of her situation a lack of empathy towards her, towards anyone to be honest.
She actually gave me the chance to get things right and went with me to a therapeutic who tried to help us. But everything was just lost. It seemed that my wife and I never really got to a point where we really had a base of understanding each other, a base to really start something new. Either she pushed me away and I just couldn’t handle it and searched comfort with another woman or she really tried and than our past caught up and just couldn’t give her the necessary trust in me to really give me a chance to proof myself.
In the process however, our therapeutic one told me “you have ADHD, right?”. I smiled and told her that I wouldn’t be surprised if that would be true. I always had problems in school, work etc. not being focused, easily bored, very active etc. But I was always kinda proud to be like this. I got through life well, especially all those year when I had a team member. But when I suddenly lost my “anchor” some years ago, things just started to really crumble. I suddenly had even more problems remembering stuff, focusing even being active was harder than before. I didn’t really think a lot about it but when I went to India over Christmas, I started to read a book about ADHD.
Then suddenly, I came to realize, that all my life I probably really had this problem and to an extend where I realized, that it really messed with my life. Starting in school, were teacher almost daily bashing me, sending me out of the classroom, no interest in most courses, bad grades, very low self-esteem therefore. Big troubles with my parents, drug abuse. Everything just made sense in a way. But then I found out that there are other symptoms as well, which I didn’t know about. Like lack of empathy, anti-social behavior, impulsiveness, addictions in general. The list goes on and on.
Why did nobody tell me that before? I don’t feel disabled in any way, but being mindful about all these things would have helped me a lot in just calibrating my mind, thoughts and actions. As my focus point, my wife shifted away there was just nothing left to focus on, nothing that gave me a point of orientation. I sometimes think of it like when you’re on a boat. If you don’t focus you horizon, you can get seasick pretty quick — and oh boy I got seasick.
After reading even more books and going to ADHD diagnosis I even found out, that my wife had it probably too. In a different way (girls always have it in a different way and most of the times, layer of layer of different conditions stack up) and that she probably suffered from it even more than I did. I just told me doctor, that I feel so stupid that I’ve never read into this earlier. I remember, that all these years I was nagging my wife every week for not doing this, doing that. I feel so stupid know, that I nagged her about not doing her office/admin stuff. Even paying the bills on time was really hard for her. I never understood it but if you have this condition, there is just nothing you can do about it. Since I try to feel and understand myself better, I literally feel absolutely terrible and dumb that I put so much pressure on her to a point where I think she got psychological problems with it.
It also explained why she sometimes ate so much chocolate, it explained why she just didn’t have any breaks anymore and could be so furious with me that I sometimes was really afraid of her. It just explains so much!
In hindsight it is so obvious to me that we both had this condition, but nobody ever really told us and although we both had such in interest in so many random things, we never really read into this specific topic. I know for a fact, that If we would have known it, if we would have had strategies, mindfulness and understanding, we would still be together. I would not have that many, that mean, mistakes and we could have helped each other trough these times. Every marriage/team has its problems, ours had the craziest highs and the lowest deeps. Somehow we got it together, I still don’t know why, but I have the feeling that in all this time, she just accepted me for who I was and I did too, except the nagging … I feel just so, so sorry, that I never understood her condition….
I had two meetings now with a therapeutic. I’m not yes diagnosed with ADHD but whatever it will be, I’m getting more and more aware of my shortcomings or rather differences in my character.
So if there is anything good that came out of all this, it will be that we both understand what it means to (probably) have ADHD and how to live the rest of ours lives with it.
It has been a hell of roller coaster ride.
