Dazed and Confused in the 21st Century…

I get so confused.  So much of the time I just don’t even know who I am.  I will start believing myself to be the person I want to be and feel good about that for a time, and even get somewhere for a while, but then certain realities hit me.

I cannot handle that I am such a financial disaster.  I cannot live with it because it makes me feel so incredibly dysfunctional and stupid and selfishly “evil.”  Because, in my mind, I am not that way, and I cannot come to grips with, nor have I ever been able to understand, WHY it is that I have these problems and WHY it is that I can’t just solve them easily.  It’s Greek to me.  I can live with disorganization if I have to.  But why can’t I make enough money?  And I don’t need anyone to answer that question because it is really a no-brainer – just one that I somehow have a failing with.  But I am determined to not be a failure if I can just understand what my problem is and know how to fix it.  Why do I struggle?

There are lots of things about ADD that I can live with.  I know I get scattered and confused and distracted and pulled in a million different directions.  I know I lose things and forget things and get “lost” sometimes in something where hours disappear inexplicably.  I have worked on and gotten better at things like controlling my tongue, being on time, not interrupting as much, paying attention to people when they talk.  I’m not perfect but a lot better at a lot of those kinds of things.  I am more aware of how I am at any given moment instead of going around totally oblivious all the time like I used to.  But the thing is, right now in my life, I am an adult and I have a lot of responsibility and it makes no sense to me that I can’t do a better job of things.  I feel humiliated and mortified and terrified and terribly, awfully, GUILTY.  I am so sensitive right now to this issue whenever it is brought up that it is all I can do to keep myself from running away screaming and hiding somewhere.  Any discussion about finances having to do with me makes my brain go off like a bomb and causes me to feel like I am under attack.  It’s too much.  It is unacceptable to me. And the more I think about it, the less able I am to actually do anything about it.

The other thing that I am having difficulty with, which I often do but which particularly bothers me at certain times like now, is that I feel so completely dissatisfied with my life and my vocation.  Sometimes I start hating and resenting every single thing that I do, that I have to do, that I should do.  And that leads me to start wracking my brain to try to come up with something that I can do to change things so that I don’t feel this way.  In the past it has meant trying to find a new job, decide on a new career, learn about something new, just do something different, with the desire to see this change my life so that I can feel happy and content.  But I’ve never been completely successful; although it has led me to many changes that often have provided some positives and have enabled me to do so many different things and learn so much.

And I don’t need to say anything more; I could go on all day but that gets me nowhere…