Phase VI- A New Start

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After months and months of planning out several blog ideas, and then procrastinating everything because school is more important (eye roll), then failing some courses (so much for importance, heh !) and finally realizing that something is wrong with me, I made the most adult decision of my life since I turned 19.

I went to a psychiatrist.

I didn’t go there directly of course. I had to make leaps and jump mountains and puddles of emotions and existential crisis.

Phase I – The Snapping Point

Okay, I thought I was smart. I mean, I am smart. But I failed my biochem course. It was my first year of university and I failed a course. In a panic state, I emailed my peer mentor and flooded her inbox with my broken hopes of getting into medical school. Her reply- Chill ! It’s first year.

Phase II – Reflection

I could not chill. I started reflecting on my past performances, heavy procrastination, late assignment deductions, hundreds of incomplete stories and poems, day dreaming in class (and everywhere else), excessive talking (so. much. to. say.), lack of focus and drowning grades. I also had been suffering from anxiety, mood swings and all the side effects that turn you into a midnight creature whose only source of happiness is weird tumbler posts.

Phase III- Research 

I started talking to some of my friends about my symptoms and almost all of them thought I might have ADHD. I started researching on it, took quizzes, read experiences and it was overwhelming to see that what I thought was my “personality” was so much wrapped up inside ADHD.

Phase IV- Uncertainty

I was contemplating whether to see a doctor. I tried following the healthy ADHD regime first- cut off caffeine, chocolates, went to the grocery store and actually shopped for healthy food !!! I even joined Salsa lessons to “exercise”. I felt good, lost 9 pounds, bought new notebooks and highlighter pens for the new semester, enrolled in my courses, went to classes, day dreamed, forgot to use the highlighter pens, crammed all my notes in one notebook and missed deadlines again. I was trying so hard but I couldn’t focus. I even added SelfControl timer on my Mac and blocked all the websites except my email, which did nothing except prompt me to check my empty email inbox every 3 minutes (Note: Make new email pals). I felt like I was deluding myself, pretending to be this smart ass with high ambitions when in reality I was not good enough to dream average dreams.

Phase V- Seeking out Help

I started searching for clinics that diagnose adult ADHD. After finding one that suited me, I went to my family doctor with the referral form. She straight up told me that I am simply lazy, and it is “who I am”, not my ADHD causing it. All that instinctual rage to bitch slap her came flooding over me (courtesy of years spent in an all-girls school), but I didn’t (courtesy of me, being polite) and I simply demanded that she sign the referral form so that I can figure this out on my own. To my surprise, she did ! Must have seen my side eye game.

I scored an appointment with a psychometrist and then a psychiatrist. After several sessions with me and my family, providing history and documentations, talking about a million things I would never have expressed to any one in this world, I realized how important it is to seek professional help when you need it. Trust me, you will know how things about yourself that seemed invisible and unimportant are changing your life. Yesterday, I was officially diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. I will start taking medications from next week, and after months and months of binge watching Game of Thrones and Grey’s Anatomy, I am finally writing this blog.

All I needed was someone to believe in me.

Adult ADHD is a neurobiological disorder that can also be categorized as a mental health condition. Symptoms include difficulty with regulating attention (being unable to focus for any length of time, hyper-focusing with the inability to break focus, and difficulty with prioritizing focus) to a level of impairment and possibly, but not necessarily, hyperactivity and impulsivity. ADHD Researchers have  studied impairments in the brain chemical neurotransmitters, dopamine, norepinephrine and epinephrine, as being a contributing cause of the disorder.

(For more information on ADHD: http://caddac.ca/cms/page.php?2 )

Pain Is A Glitter

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My sadness is pouring out of every blood vessel I own in this strange body that people claim is mine. The blackheads on my nose, the pimples on my chin, the scars on my wrist are not mine but they have stayed there for too long for me to not accept them.

I search for whom I think is me. Once I saw her in the big old library just beside the Chinatown, the only odd structure in the land of dragons and noodles that actually had classic books. She was there browsing through the Dickens and Austen, listening to Robert Frost reciting the poem “Miles Before I go to Sleep” on the broken stereo and I watched her smell the leather bound covers and smile at a rusted rose pressed inside one of them. As I watched her, I started to fall asleep until I was miles away in this stranded rooftop looking at the stars and trying to fathom why the sky looked so beautiful above my head while the one that I saw inside my eyes scared me to death.

I realized it was not the stars that I was looking at, but the scars inside my soul that were so deep that they were cracking up and oozing the pain out. How blind was I to think that my pain was glitter and I loved to see it shine.

Corners

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                                                                                                                        I am here at this corner
                                                                                                            Trying to give you my world
                                                                                                          Breathless with expressions 
                                                                                                   of my fears, doubts and insecurities
                                                                                           but also happiness
                                                                                   that draws us closer.
You are here at this corner
Looking at me 
Hearing all my words
But are you listening?
I see you smile
You are not looking at me anymore
Slowly
we are drifting apart. 
 Your reactions
remind me 
that I’m talking
to a stone cold wall. 
And here is our love. 
In a sad twisted corner. 
All alone. 

Covers

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Have you ever cried so hard underneath your covers at night after you’ve made love to your lover and he sleeps soundly besides you, 
his hand across your chest, trying to hold you in but slowly slipping away.


You hold your breath in, 
try to choke up the tears. Your face 
is covered 
because you are afraid that he might see you weeping and startle himself in his half asleep state. 

It’s hot. It is so
hot under the oven of blankets. It is suffocating
you, your tears wetting your face like butter over flour, sticky, so sticky. 
It is as if you are glued for life. 

Yet you try to stifle that sniffle, whimpering, whispering, wondering, wailing your soul out, bawling your eyes out. 

Why. Why, you ask. 
You ask yourself instead of the man next to you. 
He flays his arms with you one fine evening, dines his desires with another, the next evening. 
Stop !
Do not explain more. You shall burn yourself underneath the covers, bite your hands from crying out, swallow that lump in your throat, that pain in your chest, that hurt in your heart. Feel guilty, feel lacking, feel insecure. 

Only because you think of him first, and he thinks of none. 

Iron Threads

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She told me
You are beautiful, don’t forget to smile.
But how can you stretch your lips wide
And crinkle your eyes
When there is a hand sewing
Iron threads onto your lips.

I need some water,
I begged.
I was trying to rust those lines
Blowing some air
Trying to wet my lips
But all I could feel was
The taste of my own blood.
I think its ironic
How the color of rust
And the color of blood
Blend into each other.
I can see the thread melting into me.

Co-incidence?

I think not.
I smile.

Sadness

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Her heart bleeds at the possibilities
Of it being squeezed to death
For she opens it to people
Whom she is not supposed to
care about.

It bleeds stars and star dust, moons and moonstones
Of hope and relief and happiness
Of being stroked and, caressed and, loved.
But she knows that
bright things attract the serpent
Just like it did in the garden of Eden
Lure of the lust and lust of the love
False love, but still love
The heart cannot resist.
So she makes her heart dark.
Her thoughts dark.
She lies in darkness.
She lives in darkness.
She weeps in darkness.
For nothing can heal her heart
And nothing can break it more
Than her own sadness.