Let It Bleed

I've finally reached my wit's end. It happened two months ago, after a lifetime of mayhem. Lying on my couch, I flung my laptop into the floor and grabbed my forehead and spit and cussed and rolled around. I had a feeling of fuzziness, lightheadedness, almost like an electrical storm taking place in my lower forehead, it was downright irritating.

From my begining days I've been ADD in the flesh. In my young years, mom was always screaming at me for leaving the faucets running. I would use them, and walk off. Or come into a room to find them running, hours gone by. I left school, I just refused to do anything that required cognitive function. I would sit in class for hours..months.. just staring.. doodling..maintaing an average below 50 in all my general high school studies. Yet, when it came time to take state-mandated assessment testing, I always received some form of academic recognition. Teacher's were concerned. By chance, I developed a heart condition and used that as my scapegoat, leaving public highschool, and enrolled in a local a charter school program. I took my entire junior and senior year as "credit by exam" and completed two years worth of work in about three months. In my young adult years I began having greater difficulties. I would be in the midst of a heated conversation and open my mouth and I would just go blank, unable to get out what I wanted to say, and really not even being able to form the thoughts in my head. Just a black void. The object of my frustrations was able to string together their rebuttles fluentley and really put me in my place. So I started getting a little nervous.

Recently, I yet again left my headlights running on my truck. It's an every-other-day sort of thing. I had to call someone to drive 20 miles in the ice to boost me. I'm glad they left me their battery charger, I left them on again a few hours later and did it again. The longest I've been employed is six months. I just wake up one morning and decide I hate this job and if I can just make it "one more paycheck" then I can leave and sit on my *** and spend my cash until I run out and become dependent on personal loans while I "put out applications".

In the begining I thought of myself as intelligent, as all my instructors and teachers and test administrators had reinforced this belief in me unyieldingly in my childhood. Now, employers speak to me like I'm mentally imparied, slowly, loudly, while other's tell me I'm "scatter-brained" and let me go.

I finally told my doctor what I thinks wrong with me. She hesitated, and sent me for a MRI of the brain. I've got the unremarkabley clear results sitting here in front of me. Cranial nerves 2-12 are intact. Blood work is a-ok.

Somewhere along the way, I began to fear I had some sort of dementia or early-onset Alzheimers in my 20s. I still leave the faucets running, I go to town to get some bread three or four days in a row, and never bring it home. I leave the house and leave everything I need behind. I tell myself five minutes before I leave "remember to take this" and sit it in the path separating me from the door, but somehow manage to neglect it. I read a paragraph, or article, and can't recall what it was about. So I say "Ok, focus" and read it agian, still nothing. I get angry and say "Understand it this time" but can't recall the subject material. When I can read, I skip or miss entire words or phrases or completely misread them. I forget how to pronounce words I've spoken all my life, same goes for spelling. I can't remember all the names of people I see almost daily. I feel overwhelmed so easily, wether it's sorting a few papers of mine or getting out of my truck and ensuring that I get everything out that I need to take with me. Some times unloading the dishwasher seems like a monumental task requiring every ounce of energy and cognitive function I have in me. Cooking leaves me exhausted. I've got bad memory loss. I can't immediately remember how to adjust the water tempature in the shower to make it hotter or colder when I'm in it, it's trial and error. Deciding on what to get to eat on my way home requires me to pull over in a parking lot and aguish to myself for an hour over the choice, but most the time I just sit there and watch the cars whiz by until I remember I have a choice to make. I reverse my words, saying things such as "gas of tank" instead of "tank of gas". I sleep 12 plus hours a day and during my waking hours, sit and stare and think about my problems, eyes out of focus. I'm worn out and I'm getting anxious, and maybe even a little neurotic.

I have a question. Does anyone here having problems remembering their own symptoms? I can't ever remember my symptoms when my doctor asks me. I kick myself after I leave and recall them later. I can't even remember most of them to type here, yet they are the very things that are destroying my quality of life. I'm unemployed again and disappointing all the people I care about, though I have gone back to school. I'm in my second semsester of four, and feel so ******ed up that I can't function well enough to sit through those treacherous four hours a day. These days, anything requring any real mental effort, such as homework, leaves me feeling foggy, lightheaded, detached, and unable to comply. I just shut down.

Insecure in Texas,

LIB