of killing me. I truly believed that. Between the two of them, I ALWAYS had my guard up. Intense fear and anxiety were roommates in my psyche until my diagnosis/medication and then I kicked them to the curb :)
When I think about the child that I was, being ignored day in and day out, my heart just breaks for her. To sit at the dinner table night after night for 7 years and NO ONE talked to me. I spent 7 years with no one ever connecting with me. How do you ignore a child day after day? That has to be the cruelest thing you can truly do to a child. I can’t even connect with the level of agony that caused because it is just too much. I reverted to fantasyland to cope. I think to a child having one parent hate you is bad enough but there was no way I could have handled having both of my parents hating me. In my mind my father loved me. He had to. I created an illusion to survive.
I think now of the two children I spent time with weekly. I do 4 hours of childcare for 8 year old Riley and 4 year old Keegan. They are the sweetest little souls I have ever met, kind, gentle and loving. When I am with them those 4 hours, they talk my ear off :) I listen and respond and give all I have. To think that is just 4 hours out of one week.
It really puts in perspective why it is so important to meet a child’s needs; they are immediate and urgent for a reason. Children don’t have a true perception of time. Whether it is waiting 5 minutes, 30 minutes or FOREVER; it is all painful to a child. I think the recovery process from the pain is quicker depending on how long the child had to wait.
I have had my own pet sitting business for many years. Dogs remind me of children. They will sit and wag their tail until you acknowledge them. If you don’t acknowledge a dog, it will just stay frozen in motion trying to get your attention. They can’t focus on anything else until you acknowledge them. I realize now that children are a lot like dogs. To make a child wait and wait and wait and never meet their needs is inhumane. Everything is so urgent to children not unlike dogs.
It definitely makes sense why I have always struggled to wait for ANYTHING!! For me waiting = pain. And now that I am on medication and feel a true sense of self love I can let this deep pain go. I don’t need to carry it any longer. It wasn’t that I didn’t deserve to be loved and acknowledged on a daily basis. It was the fact that neither my father or step-mother had the capacity to love. Looking at my life and looking at their lives, I truly believe they both suffered from dopamine/serotonin deficiency. Their diet was full of sugar, caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, always working, flying off the handle at any given moment, always spending money, etc. Now that I look back I can see they really weren’t comfortable in their own skin and they definitely had the emotional age of a young child. Real adults do not abuse children…period.
So skipping forward, I escaped with 4 garbage bags to my name 6 months after I graduated from high school. I was so fortunate to have gotten a job at L.L. Bean. It really saved my life. My senior year was so unbearable; I was drinking whiskey, smoking pot, taking speed, and binging on a daily basis. When I got the job at Bean’s, I immediately gave up all drugs and whiskey. The only thing I held onto was SUGAR. Thank Goodness it is legal :)
My years at Bean’s were a struggle. I was out of control with sugar/binging, full of rage, flying around like a squirrel looking for nuts just before winter strikes, shutdown, and just struggling to get by. I worked in the Accounting Department. I handled check depositing and then moved into making bank deposits from the retail store sales. That was my favorite job at Bean’s. I loved handling lots of money! Ironic though now to think I had a sit down job all those years with undiagnosed Adult ADHD-Hyperactive/Impulsive Type. Sitting still was almost impossible. I was always jumping up to go the bathroom, get a snack, chat with other coworkers, etc. I somehow made it through until I was 26 and then decided I needed to leave. I had been there 8 years and I was bored.
Now from then until recently, I really had no concept of the future. I always lived in the moment, spontaneous and just did what I wanted. I never saved money. If I had money, I spent it. It never even crossed my mind to save for my future. My impulsivity was severe. I always thought I lived chronically in debt because of the severe deprivation I suffered as a child. I supported myself from age 14 on. The only thing I got from 14 to 18 from my father and stepmother was food, a bed, and 1 gift at my birthday and Christmas. I paid for all my clothes, all my necessities, my own car, graduation pictures, etc. I will never forget my senior year in high school. My step-mother asked me what I wanted for Christmas and I said a jacket from L.L. Bean. Christmas morning when everyone was opening presents under the tree, she told me my gift was over by the living room door. I looked over and it was my jacket still in the bag with receipt unwrapped. That was such a powerful punch to the gut. I was so unimportant she couldn’t even bother to wrap my gift and because it was not under the tree I got the message loud and clear I was not wanted there. There really are endless ways to be cruel to a child.
I think for the past 30 years of adulthood I just figured I was owed. I had a huge void and I tried to fill it with things. To think I lived 30 years of adulthood with debt really stuns me now. I had this realization a few years ago. A child who grows up with consistent love and support leaves home at 18 with an emotional bank of $100,000. Their parents deposited love in their bank every day by loving their child. That child now has that security as they enter adulthood and know if they struggle or stumble they have that security bank to draw from at anytime.
Now someone like me who grows up without love, support, security, not only has nothing in the bank when they leave home at 18, but are actually emotionally in debt $100,000. That is how I felt when I finally escaped. Not just empty but because I had to put my father and stepmother’s needs above my own, I was in the red big time. It makes sense to me that leaving home feeling emotionally in debt by $100,000 that I would continue to live in adulthood severely in debt in all areas of my life; emotionally, physically, spiritually and financially.
Now 8 months post my diagnosis of ADHD-Hyperactive/Impulsive Type, and being treated with medication, I don’t think that is the whole answer. Now that my dopamine/serotonin levels are normalized, I don’t crave to have excessive things anymore.
I don’t feel the need to spend money I don’t have all the time. I still occasionally will spend money when it is tight but there is a lot more thinking involved now. I think I may have mistaken the bottomless pit of emptiness with extremely low dopamine/serotonin levels. Now that I feel full daily, I just don’t focus on things to fill me up like I used to i.e. excessive food, excessive spending, excessive working. Also the things that felt out of my control i.e. excessive ruminating about the past, excessive chronic fatigue, excessive over re-activeness including lashing out at people, getting rageful, etc., have just dissipated. I still occasionally think about the past, get upset, but nothing like before. That to me feels like such a gift.
Now work wise, I left Beans in 1989 and proceeded to have 7 more jobs until I started my own pet sitting business in 1999. I did it very part-time for over 2 years as I was too scared to let go of the security of my full-time job. I would attribute 7 jobs in 10 years to my ADHD. I realize now that acting on impulse on a chronic level is just exhausting.
I figured out recently that making a snap decision about a relationship, a job, or a situation, is like basing that decision on a snapshot. To me a relationship, a job or a situation is more like a movie. Making a decision on a snapshot is like forgetting the movie. No one person, job or situation is a snapshot. I can’t tell you how many relationships, friendships, jobs, etc., I left because something would happen and I would overreact and just leave. I would completely forget the bigger picture. I would be so overwhelmed in the moment that the discomfort was unbearable. To me the only answer was to just leave. That seemed like the quickest way to alleviate the problem. Now I realize that an adult would temporarily leave the situation and reevaluate. Things like friendships, relationships, and work are a huge part of our lives and not to be taken lightly. I certainly didn’t mean to take them lightly and in fact I didn’t think I was, but overreacting and lashing out is childish. Children do that. Adults give themselves timeouts.
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