Living with someone WITHOUT ADHD
Jason came home from his trip and he wanted to immediately show me some presents he had recieved and so he tosses the suitcase up on the dining room table (that I had cleared earlier that day) and dumps stuff out on the table, takes clothes that need to be washed and dumps them on the floor, dump, dump, dump...
I breathe and steady myself. I know that I am going to pick all of this up... it suddenly gets added to my mental list which is not a very stable list when it is just in my head. His shoes are left wherever they leave his feet... that sentence sounds weird... his shoes are left wherever they were when they left his feet... forget it... he took his shoes off and just left them on the floor.
(I am getting a bit worked up)
Then we go to Target. I LOVE Target it is another great escape. I actually go WITHOUT a list. I am certainly living on the edge. All I needed was paper towels. I brought home “so much more!” But it was good stuff to have. It was fun. So I disregard it as any kind of falling off of any kind of wagon, well, the ADHD wagon... ok.
So we come home and all the stuff comes into the house. I keep thinking that for everything we bring into the house I have to get rid of TWO things. I will attempt this today perhaps while he is sleeping. And so the bottom line is the house that I had spent all late morning cleaning looks like a wreck again. But a clean wreck.
STILL... how frustrating when someone without ADHD and who is kind of a slob (he hates that word, ofcourse he does) I have to pick up after him. I don't HAVE to, but if I DON'T it will all be left there. Then I get into the mindset of “who cares” or I abandon ship by letting MY stuff just lay around. THIS IS DANGEROUS because when I tell him that he leaves his stuff around and it drives me crazy, he can say, “YOU do it too!”
Not good.
So to look at living with someone WITHOUT ADHD it gives you the opportunity to raise the bar on yourself and HAVE to perform even more efficiently. It is frustrating. I am lucky that he is interested in learning about ADHD. But still he has a lot to learn. Here is a good example of a BAD experience living with a SWDHADHD...
TiVo...
This is a great thing. I love it, don't fully understand it but love it nonetheless and when Jason went on his trip, I was left in charge. (uh-oh!) But I seemed to make it work well... the only thing I didn't do was SAVE the programs that had been recorded. I chose NOT to delete them but didn't realize that they would be automatically deleted after a day or so. (oops).
Well, when he got home and discovered this he was very upset (he is a TV junkie... but in a good way) and he was upset and his voice and choice of words made me feel like he was really mad at me and that I was stupid and didn't know what I was doing, etc...
I was very angry. I told him that he CAN'T be mad at something like this. I didn't do it on purpouse.
He told me that he reminded me to save the programs.
I thought I HAD.
It was kind of ugly.
But he found the program he wanted playing on another date so he WILL get to see it.
Now I want to point out that above, I put myself down habitually... I wrote “uh-oh” after I had stated that I was left in charge. I am glad that I am aware that I put myself into this category... the stupid person. I am NOT stupid. I repeat... I AM NOT STUPID
OK. Enough of this. I want to go back to talking about TARGET and share one of my favorite Lily Tomlin skits...
Lily has a character named Judith Beasley who does TV reports about various problems... she has one skit where she discusses being an impulse shopper. She states, “If you are the type of person who goes to the market to purchase a loaf of bread and comes back home with a teflon tea kettle a popcorn popper a gym suit a mop and some bean dip... chances are you are an impulse shopper. Especially if you bought these items and forgot the milk and bread!”