How could I forget something so important?

It’s been three years since A. came home from the doctor and shared that he suggested I get a vasectomy. We talked about her and her ability to handle another child after her depression. We talked about her psych medication and how it would have a terrible effect on a baby, and how we couldn’t risk it. I went to my own doctor a few weeks later, and while there I got the name of a urologist to call. I kept the number in my wallet a while, then programmed it in my phone, trying to think of a good time for elective surgery. That took several months.

Then 2010 ground into gear, and I was overwhelmed by my failings and lack of hope, leading me to therapy after shouting at my family, then finally, in the Fall, to a doctor when I lost all hope. I stopped exercising or eating well around that time, and was starting to lose track of bills and payments. 2010 was a blur of sorts, a horrible year in which I struggled to see if anything could ever improve, a year in which I pulled into my shell and just tried to keep up with what was thrown at me.

And that’s when I suppose I forgot. Everything all came to be about me. I couldn’t be a rock for anyone anymore. I still carried the doctor’s number but must have convinced myself I was too busy trying to keep from failing miserably to step outside a private phone call. I was miserable and I didn’t go do it. 2011 came and went with me putting that responsibility down a level in its importance.

Not until this year did I start to find my old optimism and engagement, or any unforced sort of hope. But it’s been three years. Now she’s worried she could be pregnant, and rightfully furious with me for forgetting our primary reason for avoiding that: birth defects. It makes no sense that I could forget. I feel horrible about it.

Could I be that self-centered? I suppose I actually have been, since my time for myself has come at the expense of everyone else’s needs. But of any needs that is one I shouldn’t have neglected or put aside. How did I block it out?

So my psych tells me I have anxiety (which I knew) and not ADHD. His suggestion is that I can’t focus because I am overwhelmed. Too much to do or too many things at once, or even multi-tasking, send me fleeing to purposeful distraction

I think that sounds about right, actually. Still, I’m slipping further behind in my work as I try to methodically order my days. It’s helping but it’s hard to do.

When we spend time explaining our feelings in a way that feels to us like it is importantly nuanced, that is difficult to say, that is something even we don’t fully understand, to have it summarized back in five simple words feels like a slap in the face.

Even if the blunt assessment is accurate, perhaps especially if it’s accurate.

To hear it three times in a row feels like mocking, like our feelings are being tossed around the room, like our motivations are simple and only an idiot could spend so much angst working through the realizations and half-developed notions of behavior that we’re only now forming about ourselves, finally, at long last, like an illiterate man waving in the air a written guide to life.

Sometimes the struggle to talk and understand each other can leave us feeling alienated and simple-minded, or worse, judged, and we need time alone to digest the possible revelations we’ve already spoken out loud. Time to cry, to heave, to think, to sit with our fears that we’ve carelessly laid raw for both of us to see.

I don’t know how panic attacks work for other people.

For me, I can hear my heart pounding, and feel like I can’t catch my breath. I don’t know what will happen to me if I don’t escape the din of the people around me. Everything becomes too loud, happy sounds or angry ones are overwhelming. I have to get out immediately to an empty room, or outside, just away. It’s urgent, like the noise and activity are going to physically overwhelm me and I’ll pass out. I feel lightheaded; my neck, legs and arms tingle and ache.

I’m sorry. I’m not strong enough. I just have to sit here awhile. I’ll leave the room and will help soon, but I simply can’t handle it right now.

Can’t focus at work. The more I have to do the harder it is. My therapist thinks I have ADHD.

Like now. I need to be working on a schedule, reviewing project budgets, contacting consultants. But I’m posting this instead.

I guess when the fear level gets high enough I will panic and work late to finish.

Sometimes it seems insane to spend 50 hrs a week in a cubicle for 50 years, motivated to produce by fear of failure.

If not, it could probably send you there.

On staycation all week; been looking so forward to this. Friday night I left work late and it felt like I was headed home go Christmas. Now it already feels like a jail. I feel foolish for imagining I’d have any free time. Those days were over a long time ago I suppose.