I feel bad for leaving everyone on a sad note with my last post, so this one is more optimistic, I swear!
My wife and I stopped drinking earlier this year. Officially, for real this time. We haven’t had as much as a drop in the last several months. And frankly, I’m pretty okay with that. Sure, there’s some FOMO when my friends are sipping on a nice craft beer or mixed drink, but for the most part, I don’t miss it. I’ve lost weight, I don’t have no-reason hives nearly as often, and I’m not constantly in a daze from being drunk or hungover almost every day.
We were paying money to have a bad time.
Something peculiar happened when we stopped drinking though. We found ourselves unable to relate to a lot of our friends who did drink a lot or rely on drugs to have fun. Suddenly, sobriety was lonely as hell. I call these growing pains, though. As in, we’re finally growing up, but the people around us are stagnating. It’s a good problem, although it doesn’t feel good in the moment.
My old church and pastor are problematic for a lot of reasons, and if you’ve snooped long enough through my blog, you’d know why. But my former pastor did have a lot of wisdom I still love by to this day. One of his sayings was “show me your friends, and I’ll show you your future.” As 90s sitcom “special episode” as it is to admit, the people you surround yourself with influence you more than you think.
Think of it this way. If someone’s standing on a table for some ungodly reason, it would be hard for them to pull another person up onto the table with them. It would be much easier for someone on the ground to pull the person on the table down to their level. It’s best to climb onto the table alone. That doesn’t mean you can’t have any friends when you’re working on yourself, though. Maybe people will see that what you’re doing is weird and different and better, and they might even climb onto a table as well.
These are good influences, definitely.
The point is, the road to getting better is lonely, but it doesn’t have to be. Instead of hanging out at bars and partying your life away, meet new people at gyms or church. Learn a new hobby and join a local group for it. Even online groups like r/decidingtobebetter on Reddit can be helpful. It sucks distancing yourself from old friends, but holding onto habits that hurt you in order to still relate to them is not worth it. You can’t keep breaking your own bones to fit into someone else’s box.
ADHD stands for “attention deficit hyperactivity disorder,” so it goes without saying that lack of attention span and general moving-around-a-lot-ness are the classic symptoms. But there’s a third symptom that doesn’t get a lot of spotlight — impulsivity.
The cause of many a spontaneous midnight Meijer’s excursion.
My impulsivity has probably been the most detrimental part of having ADHD. It’s led to a lot of addictions, like sex and alcohol, which I’ve not been shy about on this blog, especially since I’ve largely overcome these addictions. But one vice continues to plague me. Compared to the others, it seems relatively benign, but that might just be what makes it so insidious.
Yup, I’m a shopaholic. And unlike sex and alcohol, there’s no 12-step program.
Unless those 12 steps are in the direction of a mall.
We recently moved to the opposite end of the Metro Detroit area, a solid 45-minute drive from our old place, and more than an hour if you count the fact that I was driving a moving truck bigger than Arkansas through a thunderstorm to get there. The drive was rough, but the packing was even worse. Despite having the help of several amazing friends, getting all twenty-something bags of clothes into the truck was annoying and draining, and making them fit was another challenge. Even with our huge-ass truck, we had to play Tetris to get everything inside.
I wish I was exaggerating all of this, but my shopping addiction had gotten so out-of-control, it was starting to affect my life. These dresses and sweatshirts and accessories had brought me so much joy when I first held them in my hands, yet now they were little more than a nuisance. I spread them out on the floor of the new bedroom after tearing through the garbage bags they’d travelled in. Did I mention these particular bags were the biggest garbage bags the store had?! Like, designed for yard waste, not clothes hoards.
I started thinking of the financial impact of all these purchases as well. There, lying on the ground, was several thousand dollars worth of terrible life choices, if not significantly more. I’ll get to “dealing with money woes with ADHD” in a future entry in this blog series, but right now, Mt. WhythehelldidIbuythis is occupying half my bedroom and my poor wife is having to take up rock climbing just get to her own side of the bed.
“Damn it, Jess.”
So, let’s start by acquiring some hangers. This step can be as expensive or cheap as you’d like, but considering we’re putting the clothes we truly love and treasure on them, I’d recommend getting some hangers you at least like. Imagine you’re Andy and your favorite clothes are sentient beings. What would you rather rest on — some uncomfy wire hanger or a nice, plush velvet hanger? Just keep in mind however many hangers you get, that’s how many clothing items you get to keep.
You see, my entire perspective changed when I started viewing the apartment as a container for possessions, and by extension, a closet and dresser function as a container for clothes. Whatever doesn’t fit in the container has to go. Think of your closet as Noah’s Ark, and we’re about to flood the bedroom with the wrath of God and/or Marie Kondo.
Thou shalt spark joy (or else).
So begin with the essentials. If you have a uniform, start by putting those aside. I’m a pharmacy technician, so I like to have several pairs of scrubs in various colors so I don’t look like a cartoon person wearing the same thing every day. Then, identify a brand or clothing style you really like and wear a lot of. I have a ton of dresses from the faux-vintage brand Belle Poque that I love, so I’m sparing all of them. They spark joy, and I wear them frequently. They’re safe from the flood.
Now, the fun begins. Start putting everything into piles by type: sweatshirts, t-shirts, jeans, leggings, scarves, etc. Choose a system that makes sense for you. If you’re really into dresses and skirts like me, perhaps sort them into maxi length and shorter length. Then, once everything is in its place, choose a predetermined number of pieces from each pile to save. Noah let two of every kind of animal on the ark, but I like three as a rule of thumb. That allows for a little more variety. If you have more or less closet/dresser space, you can adjust this number accordingly. If your space is very limited, maybe choose one or two articles of clothing, and if you’ve got a lot of space, you can do four or five garments each. But three seems to be the “golden” number. Take your chosen clothing, put them away neatly, and congratulate them for making the cut.
But now, you probably still have a huge pile of crap to get rid of. Here’s a hard truth: you’re not going to take this shit to Goodwill. You have ADHD. All your donation bags will languish in the corner until you have to move again, and the cycle will repeat. Even if you do manage to get to Goodwill, there’s a decent chance they won’t take it. Donation centers are overrun with contributions from people who are also in the process of decluttering their junk. But this doesn’t mean all your leftover clothing is doomed to the dumpster.
The first line of defense against the landfill is your friends. Hit up some folks who have a similar style as you and lure them over with the promise of free stuff and maybe some pizza or something. Then, let them go wild. If you have any trans friends, this is a great opportunity to help them out in particular! Early on in the transition journey, a lot of people are trying to figure out their style and sizing. I managed to offload a lot of cute clothing that no longer served me when my long-distance girlfriend, who is trans, came to visit one weekend. Seeing her face light up as she methodically tried on all my old dresses made my heart happy, and I was glad to give some of the cute pieces that no longer fit me or my lifestyle a second life with someone who would really appreciate them.
Then, see what you can repurpose into something else. If you’re not very crafty, you can skip this step, or perhaps find someone who can repurpose your stuff for art projects and other things. I’m considering saving some of my old band tees to turn into a quilt or tapestry. This is a good way to salvage some of your sentimental pieces.
Now, take what’s left after letting your friends pick through your clothing. Is there a local church or organization looking for donations? Think creatively. Lots of places you wouldn’t even consider may be looking for clothes to help the community. There’s even a kinky art collective in my area that takes donations!
If you’re at a loss, there may be some donation bins in the area. Do a quick Google search to find some places to take your leftover clothing. Some are donation, some are recycling. Take the stuff that’s still usable to a donation box and leave it there, and the more beat-up clothing can go to a recycling box. It’s important to do this step as soon as freaking possible. Do not let your bags of clothing refuse sit in the closet. Put it in the way of your front door so you HAVE to take care of it in order to go anywhere. Unless your house is literally on fire, don’t move the bags unless you’re taking them to the bin.
What happens if you can’t find any place to leave your old clothes? This is the hard part — you might have to throw some stuff away. It feels wasteful, and I’m not going to lie and say it’s great for the environment, but sometimes, sending things to the landfill is the only option you have. In ye olden days, people would bury the things that no longer served them. In fact, in many witchy traditions, old spell ingredients were buried in order to let them return to the Earth from which they came. Make this goodbye a sacred moment. Thank your clothes for coming to you and being in your life, even for a moment, and wish them well on their journey to becoming dust once again.
Once everything is in its proper place, take the time to celebrate. ADHD is hard to manage sometimes and it’s not easy to break the detrimental habits that come with it. I happen to have the triple-whammy of ADHD, autism, and OCD, the last of which being a hallmark sign of hoarding tendencies. But you, dear reader, are stronger than you know, and if my dumb ass can do this, so can you. There’s no feeling like opening the closet to find nothing but things that bring you joy, instead of feeling bogged down by stuff you barely even care about. Once you learn to let go, you’ll discover what it means to truly appreciate what you have.
Ever since, my Facebook feed has been inundated with all kinds of takes on her demise. Some people are celebrating her life and mourning her death, while others are mourning her life and celebrating her death. Some people see her as a feminist icon who ruled an entire country in her own right and took no shit, while many understandably see her as a symbol of the British monarchy and imperialism. And yet, some people are lavishing in the moment Princess Di greets her at the pearly gates with a brick. Needless to say, like most world leaders, Queen Elizabeth was a divisive character.
I think she was all these things. And most importantly, I think she was — hear me out — Just Some Guy™.
People love to sort each other into Good Guys™ and Bad Guys™. We’ve become more polarized in recent years, thanks to an uptick in political fervor brought on by populist leaders like Trump, but it’s always been a thing. We human beings love our black and white morality. You’re for us, or against us. And in certain things, I’m prone to agree. You can’t be a Nazi and a Good Guy, for example. If you ascribe to that ideology, you’re automatically in the Bad Guy category. There’s not a lot of people who are unambiguously Good Guys, but—
Okay, there are a few.
Anyways, back to Queen Lizzy. She did some really dope things, like getting off her royal highness and serving in the military during WWII as a frickin princess. Yes, she was a princess who worked to aid the effort to fight literal Nazis, who we have established to be absolutely, 100 percent Bad Guys.
Cinderella would never.
At the same time, she was complicit as the British Empire committed many atrocities against other countries. Plenty has already been written about how shitty Britain has been throughout history. I mean, what do you expect from a country that’s tried to take over the world? I say this as someone who is of primarily British descent. Most Americans get to brag about cool stuff their ancestors’ countries did. Me? Nothing but imperialism and some dope ass rock music, which, in all fairness, was “borrowed” from black American musicians. So really, just imperialism.
The point is, everyone sucks. The queen sucked. Trump sucks. Biden sucks. Freddie Mercury sucked. My mom sucks. I suck. And at the same time, we all do really cool stuff (except Nazis, because fuck them). That’s all part of this thing called being human. We’re all magic moving sentient carbon lumps, and there’s nothing wrong with that. All we can do is reduce the amount of sucky things we do and try to do more cool stuff. Learn from other’s mistakes and try to be a better person.
There’s no Good Guys or Bad Guys, for the most part. Just Some Guys, and the queen? Definitely Some Guy.
It’s been almost two years since my life-changing diagnosis of ADHD. Suddenly, all of the issues that had plagued me my entire life made a whole lot of sense. I wasn’t stupid — I was neurodivergent, and in learning the true nature of my big dumb brain, I learned to embrace the parts of my neurological difference that made me, well, me. As much as I hated how my brain worked at times, I came to see my ADHD as a sort of blessing/curse, the same way Mei from Turning Red learned to love the red panda she turned into whenever she experienced emotions.
ADHD doesn’t come with a fursona, sadly.
Today, I found out one of my favorite professors had been diagnosed with ADHD over the summer, and just like that, my entire perspective of her changed — she was me! And as someone who aspires to be a professor of music therapy someday, seeing someone in that position who has what I have and is successful was really reassuring. It was like someone patted me on the shoulder and said “Hey Jess, this can be you someday.” And it felt really frickin’ cool, yo.
And it hit me — I’m that to someone. Somewhere out there, some aspiring musician or writer or college student is trying to figure out what the hell is wrong with them, why they can’t sit down and practice or write or study or do much of anything without getting sidetracked. Maybe they think they’re just stupid, too. And it’s my turn to show them that they, too, can be successful with ADHD. I believe everything happens for a reason, and perhaps my “curse” is intended to be used as a blessing for others, just like how Mei’s ancestors used the red panda to protect their loved ones.
I won’t lie and pretend I have it all together. I’m still working on getting my shit together. I think most people are, if we’re honest with ourselves. No one has it 100 percent figured out at any given time. All I know is I have nearly three decades of life experience with this brain of mine, so I’ve learned some tricks on how to utilize it. Here is part one of my “owner’s manual” for ADHD.
#1: You have ADHD
Duh.
You have ADHD. You. Have. ADHD. That’s not going to change. Your brain is wired differently from most of the world, and nothing can change the way it works. Barring a lobotomy or something, but that will cause more problems than it solves, ya know? There’s a reason we don’t do those anymore.
They say the first step of recovery is acceptance. The fifth step in grief is also acceptance, so get all your feelies out. Journal about it. Bring it up in therapy. Punch something that can be punched (not a person or other sentient creature, preferably). But as soon as you come to terms with the fact that you have ADHD, you can start working toward really living with it.
There is no cure for ADHD. There are treatments to make it more manageable, sure, but there are no cures. Yoga will not cure ADHD. Walking outside will not cure ADHD. Essential oils will not cure ADHD. Heck, Adderall doesn’t even cure ADHD, and it’s literally an ADHD medication. Full disclosure: I use all of the things I listed to help me concentrate and ground myself, but guess what? I still have ADHD, and everything that comes with it.
That’s not a bad thing though!
You see, in music therapy school, and presumably training for all other types of therapy, there’s a push for “person first language” and saying someone has a condition, rather than is it. It’s a way of separating the person from the condition. But I don’t like that for my ADHD. It’s a disability, sure, but it’s also a huge part of my personality and being. It’s like how the autistic community is reclaiming “autistic,” declaring “I am autistic,” rather than saying “I have autism.” In that same vein, I am ADHD. ADHD is a inseparable from me. For better or worse, it’s a piece of me, and nothing will change that.
Sometimes I wonder if wide-eyed 17-year-old me would be happy with the direction my life has taken. After all, at that point, I was in the best shape of my life, earning straight A’s, serving as colorguard captain AND class president, and full of ambition to become the best version of myself. In fact, I remember how I was so determined to become the best performer in my dance class, I’d practice for an hour in front of the mirror every night. I had so much motivation, so much drive. I had every intention of bursting through those high school doors and jumping into a life as a music therapist, professor, creator, and business owner.
Without going into too much of a “woe is me” spiel, things haven’t exactly turned out the way I wanted. After changing my major, dropping out of college twice due to then-undiagnosed ADHD, and letting my mental and physical health slip farther than ever, I feel like teenage me would cry if she met present me.
Something needs to change.
Rina Sawayama’s “Hold the Girl” is a love letter to her younger self, and I remember the first time I heard the lyrics. REALLY heard them. I felt little Jess looking back at me sadly as Rina sang the lines “Sometimes I get down with guilt/For the promises I’ve broken to my younger self.” I’ve let myself fall so far from where I was.
That’s why I’m taking action. I’m not letting myself sink any further. I want little Jess to be proud of me. I want her to be excited to grow into this woman I’ve become. So I’m deciding to be better.
Here’s my plan, inspired by Andy Frisella’s 75 Hard challenge. Despite him kind of being a dumbass (like, Trumper and antivax-level dumbassery), his challenge has a lot of substance. Follow a diet (I’m choosing intermittent fasting), two 45 minute workouts a day, no alcohol, one gallon of water a day, and read ten pages of nonfiction or self-improvement literature daily. I need a holistic plan of action like this one to get me out of this rut I’m in, and I’m sharing this plan and my progress on my blog to keep me accountable.
In short, I’m not going to sit back and be content to suck anymore. She wouldn’t want me to.
2022 so far has been a year of releasing things that no longer serve me. I started by giving up vaping, then alcohol. Next on the shit list is overeating, which will be a lot easier to address after we move to an apartment that isn’t surrounded by every fast food establishment known to man.
Also known as the DANGER ZONE
But perhaps my biggest vice isn’t something I do, but something I don’t do — the damn thing. As in, the stuff I actually want to do with this life.
I’ve grown so complacent with numbing myself with video games and YouTube binges that I’ve let go of a lot of my creative endeavors. To be fair to myself, I hide away in these frivolous things to escape from the stresses of work and school, and it’s healthy to indulge in mindless fun every now and then, but it’s still not an excuse to let my projects languish. Someday when I’m dead, my long-abandoned Sims or virtual farm won’t matter. What will matter is the work I leave behind, and right now, that output is pretty abysmal.
I’ve had part one of my story — THE story — finished for about half a year now. I’ve been working to get this out for more than a decade, and I finally finished it, only to wuss out and not actually publish it. Why? Part of the problem is I’m scared it’s no one’s going to like my story or even care enough to read it, but to be honest, an even bigger part of the problem is how I’m just to lazy to do much of anything.
WHO’S THAT POKÉMON? IT’S PROCRASTINATION!
So I’m resolving to keep writing, even when it’s hard. Even when I don’t feel like it. Because I don’t want to leave this planet someday without putting my stories out there. The saddest stories are the ones that never get told.
That being said, keep checking back here, because I’m going to post what I write on this very site. You may have noticed I switched the name of the blog again, this time to my own name. That’s because I’m intending this blog to be a repository of all my writing from now on, fiction and nonfiction alike. If you follow me for my posts on mental health and spirituality, don’t fret — I’m still going to post things on those topics from time to time. But I’m especially excited to share my story with everyone, once and for all. It’s been a part of me and my imagination for so long, and I’m ready to see it come to fruition.
It’s scary to put my writing out there, and it’ll take a lot of dedication and hard work, but I know I need to finally do the damn thing.
Scrolling through Instagram as I tend to do on a lazy Sunday evening, I found this infographic:
I could write an entire doctoral thesis on how this relates to my own life. Like, how I’m glad I didn’t end up a journalist, because I can’t handle that kind of pressure. Or how I’m glad I never reached Taylor Swift levels of fame, because, well, I can’t handle that kind of pressure.
I’d like to think I’m the fancy bejeweled Russian kind, though.
Young Jess wanted a lot of things that, in retrospect, adult Jess would have considered a nightmare. None more so than my middle school crush, who I absolutely believed was my soulmate.
Ah yes, the face of a woman who knew exactly what she wanted.
I remember crying myself to sleep over this kid, who will remain unnamed, but we’ll just call him Kyle. The way his floppy auburn hair jostled in the wind at youth group meetups, the way his blue-green eyes shone like sea glass at Cedar Point. I was obsessed with this guy in a way I’d never been obsessed with anyone ever. I didn’t think I was capable of having a crush. The closest I’d come before was strange thoughts about Ann Wilson from the band Heart and this dude from an American Idol knockoff no one remembers. I wasn’t supposed to have crushes on people I actually knew. That was preposterous.
But there he was. I was so enamored with him, I couldn’t imagine a single flaw in him. And young me thought this is what love is. I would have done anything for him. I would have let him walk all over me if he wanted. I would have readily given up everything that made me, well, me, if it meant a chance to have him. And I did. I changed the way I dressed to be more like his then-girlfriend. I started trying to be someone I wasn’t. And surprisingly, it worked! A few years later, I ended up dating him. And…it was anticlimactic. We kissed once, and there were no sparks. I had this boy of my dreams, but something wasn’t right. Shortly after, we broke up. it was mutual.
I had many crushes since, but none were as intense as Kyle. I think everyone needs a Kyle, just to show them what love isn’t. Love isn’t obsession. Love isn’t being a doormat. Love isn’t losing yourself to someone else. Kyle wasn’t a bad person. In fact, he was a great person! Just not my person.
Sometimes I wonder what life would have been like had I ended up with him. Before writing this article, I looked him up on Twitter, my last connection to the boy that changed my life. It was…mostly hockey. Some stuff about Bitcoin. A retweet of Ben Shapiro, which is probably not a good sign. But mostly just hockey. Even if middle school me got her way, she’d be miserable today. I’d be miserable today. I don’t give a shit about hockey or Bitcoin, and Ben Shapiro kind of sucks. And he’d be just as miserable with some eccentric artsy chick who likes Bernie Sanders and blogs for fun.
Sometimes we don’t get what we want, and that’s okay. I’ll let the Rolling Stones take it from here.
JESSA JOYCE 