Thoughts about my new diagnosis

Written in September 2013:

I've been mulling over what the diagnosis of ADD means to me, and why I have this huge jumble of emotions about it.

In a big way, it's a huge relief. It's something I would suspect, but then I would tell myself, "It's all in your imagination. Your real problem is that you are stupid, lazy, etc., etc."

Now I know a lot of that stuff was not my fault. And, it seems like I can make sense of things that have baffled and frustrated me since I was a kid.

In school, my teachers would say that I made "careless errors". This was so frustrating, because I felt as if I was being accused of not trying, of not caring, and the opposite was true. To this day, I can work very hard on writing something, proofread it a number of times, and it will still contain baffling typos and errors. It's become somewhat of a joke that almost anything I hand out to my students will contain at least one obvious error, unless someone else checks it. Usually I say upfront, "I'm sure there are mistakes, because I'm world's worst proofreader." Does this mean I don't care? Hardly. I hate those mistakes and typos.

When I would clean my room as a child, trying to do my very best with the hopes that my mother would finally, for once, be pleased at the result, she would immediately notice things like a shirt sleeve hanging out of the drawer, some toys in a corner, even a dirty sock in the middle of the floor. I could have sworn that I carefully inspected the room and found nothing amiss. How could I not have noticed these things? My mother would be so frustrated at me. She couldn't believe that I didn't do this sort of thing on purpose, just to annoy her. "Are you blind?" she would ask. "Why do you call me in to inspect your room when it's still a mess?"

I have always wondered why things that seem so easy to other people seemed so hard, almost impossible, to me. Am I stupid? Dense? Weird? People would say, "You must not be paying attention or this would be so easy for you!" but that only made things worse. I thought I was paying attention.

My husband has been forever frustrated and baffled as to why my life seems in a constant state of disorganized chaos, despite my best attempts over the years to correct this. I own numerous books about organizing, both personal and household, and I've tried -- and failed at -- numerous systems over the years. He has seen this as a lack of effort on my part, a lack of follow through. The truth is that I've tried and tried and tried, only to finally give up in despair, hoping that maybe the next book or the next system will work for me.

He has never understood why things will overwhelm me. A typical example: I decide to clean out the closet. He says, "Great idea! And, while we're at it, why don't we clean the entire bedroom and organize all our drawers?" He is an amazing super being and could actually tackle such a project. So he starts pulling everything out and then I'm fighting tears because, to me, he might as well say, "If you tried hard enough, you could organize every house in the neighborhood in one day!" I simply don't know where to start. The closet alone was already too overwhelming.

I feel like going back to every one of my teachers, from elementary school through high school, and saying, "I have ADD. So there. I wasn't bad, lazy, unmotivated, uncaring, or slow."

It makes me want to cry, thinking about it. I was trying. I was trying very hard. And when all those intense efforts never seemed to pay off, when I was accused of being sloppy or difficult or lazy, can anyone blame me for deciding not to push myself so hard? What is the use of trying if it's never good enough?

I think the biggest deal for me is knowing that I'm not stupid. Maybe I'll finally stop berating myself about that.

When I was a kid and my mother would be at wits' end with me, she would go on and on about how stupid I was. But, at report card time, I would get in trouble for my grades. If I was like one of my kids, I would have seen the irony in that and would have said, "Either I'm so terribly stupid, or I'm lazy for not getting straight A's. You can't have it both ways." But, instead, I grew up thinking that I was stupid and lazy.

At the same time, I can understand why I drove my mother to such frustration.

I've taught a number of kids with ADHD. They tend to do well, maybe because I refuse to label them or treat them like their diagnosis. Some of them, along the way, make me want to rip my hair out at times. But I've always had a soft spot for the kid who is bouncing all over while thinking he's standing still, or for the dreamy kid who has to be brought back to earth every few minutes. I wasn't the bouncing off the wall type, but I can relate to thinking you're doing well at something only to get in trouble for failing. One of my students once said, "I focused really well today, didn't I?" and I didn't have the heart to tell him that, to everyone else, it seemed as if he had been inhabiting a different planet during class. Now I know why I relate so well to those kids. I'm one of them.

Maybe best of all, the next time I blast myself with, "What the hell is wrong with you? You are such a complete loser!!" I can remind myself that I now know what's wrong with me, and I'm not a loser.

 

My mother responds

My mother's phone call startled me awake. It wasn't early; I had been sleeping in late to make up for a string of anxiety-laden nights of insomnia. I figured the was calling to talk about the letter. I was right.

Her voice sounded excited, almost overjoyed. "I wanted to let you know we read your letter and I want you to know what we did with it!" Anyone listening in at this point would have thought that I had sent her the most wonderful news, and she was so happy that she had put the letter in a scrapbook or framed it on the wall.

This was just the beginning of a surreal conversation.

Sounding almost gushing, she thanked me for the letter, especially my expressions of love. She thought the letter very well written. In fact, she read it twice, very carefully. So did my father.

Then she burned it.

"I've put it behind me!" she said with great enthusiasm, as if announcing something I should take great delight in. "You should too! It's in the past, it's forgiven, it's over and done with. Time to move on. I'm over it and I hope you will get over it too."

She's over it? She is over it?!! She reads about how her son sexually abused her daughter for years and, just like that, she is over it? Not a twinge of grief, not the slightest moment of compassion, not a bit of concern, not a moment of anguish? Just like that, she is over it?

Another woman I know found out, decades after the fact, that her son had molested her daughter. She hopped on the next available plane and flew clear across the country to hold her daughter in her arms, weep with her, and support her in whatever way she could. "I didn't know then, or I would have stopped it. But I know now, and I will do anything to help you heal," she told her daughter. And she begged her forgiveness for failing to protect her...for anything she did that made it possible for such a tragedy to occur.

Such a response, obviously, is utterly foreign to my mother. She let me know she was not at all to blame. Her conscience was clear. She was at peace. All was well in her world. She was sure I was fine...after all, I have Sheldon and my therapist...and she was not going to give the contents of the letter another thought.

"It's buried in the past!" She said this several times. I think she was disappointed that I wasn't excited, overjoyed even, that she was able to get over my years of sexual abuse so quickly. "It will never bother me again!"

I honestly think she wanted me to be happy for her...happy that my long hellish nightmare had mattered so little to her, that she was not going to allow it to intrude on her happiness, that she really didn't care.

Letter to my parents

This letter has either already arrived at my parents' address, or should arrive any time now:


Dear Mom and Dad,

This is probably the most difficult letter I've ever had to write. The subject matter is extremely painful for all of us. For years, I wanted to spare you that pain. I thought what I endured was my burden to bear alone. But when I finally told Sheldon my shameful secret, his immediate response was, "That explains so much." Suddenly things made sense to him. My regret is that I did not tell him sooner.

That is why I am writing this letter. My intent is not to cause you any more pain. I love both of you more than my feeble words could ever express. In no way do I blame you for something you had no way of knowing. However, you as my parents deserve to know the truth.

There is no easy way to say this, no gentle way to lead up to what Sheldon already told you on the phone. Without going into gory details, Damien began molesting me when I was 13, and the sexual abuse continued for years, escalating in severity. What he did meets the commonly accepted definition of incest ("sexual contact between those so closely related that it would be illegal for them to marry") and, although I have no memory of actual intercourse occurring, it meets the newly accepted Justice Dept. definition of rape ("penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim")

Those words are painful to read, I know. I wish they weren't true; I wish none of it had happened. It has been terribly anguishing for me to deal with the ugliness and shame of it all.

I'm sure this raises many questions for you. Why did I let it happen? Why didn't I tell? Why didn't I make Damien stop? Why did I act, all these years, as if nothing was wrong?

Remember when my aunts feared, because of how compliant I was with Damien, that I would eventually fall under the spell of some man, in such bondage that I would do his every bidding, even if I knew it was wrong? Their fears proved correct, only it happened much sooner, and it was with Damien. By the time I was 13, he could get me to do almost anything. It's no secret he could be tyrant-like. Even as a child, he wanted to be world dictator. He found in me an all too easy subject to exert power over and to control. That's the essence of sexual abuse -- it's far more about power and control than it is about sex.

The way I attempted to cope while it was happening was to pretend it away and refuse to think about it. It was as if I was in an unrelenting fog. I became a master at denial. In the place of the truth, I created a fantasy world, wherein my life wasn't filled with shame and despair; my brother wasn't sexually abusing me or pressuring me to read porn, drink alcohol and take drugs; instead, he was World's Best Big Brother, wonderfully protective. The truth -- that the brother I so loved and admired would hurt and betray me in such vile ways -- was something I couldn't bear.

So I put my dark secret in a box, locked and sealed it, and buried it as deeply as I could. Unfortunately, the toxic slime that kept oozing out of that box poisoned every aspect of my life, not just during those awful years, but all the years since then.

It was incredibly difficult, but I finally managed to get Damien to stop, to promise to leave me alone, to stop trying to convince me that there was nothing wrong with an incestuous relationship other than my unwillingness to submit to him. Although he never asked, I forgave him. It was over and done with, and I tried to leave it in the past. In those days, I didn't completely understand forgiveness. I thought it meant reconciliation and restoration as well, and that I had no right to treat him any differently than if the years of sexual abuse had never happened.

Up until 2009, I had told only one other person, a therapist that I saw in college. She was no help whatsoever. I left and never returned. When I began seeing Randy, my current therapist, it took me months to finally tell him what I referred to as my "deepest darkest secret". Actually I couldn't even get the words out at first. He had to say them for me. It didn't come as a shock to him; the red flags were all there.

The ways I coped back when I was 13 -- the things I did to prevent going insane or being plunged into even darker despair -- helped me survive. But they aren't healthy ways of coping with life over the long haul. They aren't how God intends for anyone to live.

What we have been doing in therapy is, in many respects, like cleaning out old, festering wounds that should have been treated decades ago. In addition, we are exposing the lies that have kept me bound most of my life, and we are replacing them with truth. A friend of mine describes this as "soul surgery". Eventually all will be repaired and stitched up, every gaping hole mended, every wound cleaned and healed.

More than ever before, I believe in a redemptive God. What men meant for evil, God will use for good. God can redeem anything, even this.

Please know that, no matter what -- past, present or future -- I love both of you very much. I am thankful beyond words that God blessed me with such wonderful parents.

I love you!
Annie


The letter does contain a partial truth...or partial lie, depending on one's perspective. I don't blame my mother in the sense that I believe she would have prevented or stopped the incest had she known. But I do blame her for creating a family environment that allowed incest to flourish for years.


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13 again

My brother began sexually abusing me when I was 13 years old.

Now, decades later, my husband told my parents. I had told my mother some time this past year, saying that Damien had molested me for years and that Randy, my therapist, described it as sexual abuse. On the phone with my husband, my mother denied that I had said any such thing, claiming that I had said only that my brother and I had had "problems".

My husband told them to expect a letter from me. It seemed like an excellent idea, but I've been stressing over it ever since then.

I was a young 13 year old. Physically I looked much younger. I'd "shot up" over the summer to almost 4'9", and I was a scrawny little thing, just barely beginning to develop. My period didn't start until almost two years later. Emotionally...well, most kids seemed more mature at that age.

Today, during therapy, I turned 13 again. At first, it was just my emotions, but then I morphed back into that little girl. I sat huddled on the couch and asked Randy fearfully if he thought my parents would get angry at me. Earlier I had told him how inept, stupid and ugly I had felt at that age, and how dirty I felt after the incest started...how I knew something was seriously wrong with me but couldn't figure out what it was...how I longed to be invisible. Now I WAS little me back then. I felt it...heard it in my voice. I started crying, and told Randy that I really wasn't a bad girl, I didn't mean to do bad things, I wasn't trying to be bad on purpose. I didn't tell him that I was afraid he didn't believe me, that I was afraid I was in trouble, that I was afraid he was going to get mad at me.

Randy was saying adult things and I couldn't figure out why he was talking to me that way. I told him that I didn't understand, but he just repeated himself. It was way over my head. I felt stupid. I wanted to ask him what he meant, but I was afraid he would get mad at me or make fun of me. I wanted to ask, "Why are you telling me these things? I'm just a kid!" His words didn't make sense. I wondered why he was treating me like an adult. It felt confusing and scary.

Then I remembered that, in another world, I'm supposed to be an adult. I wanted to ask Randy to help me find my way back to my adult self, but I didn't know how, and I was scared.

I forced myself to look around. I looked at my wedding ring and reminded myself that I'm a grown-up now; I'm not that little girl. I took off a ring my husband gave me, one I wear next to my wedding ring, and turned it over in my hands, reminding myself of where I was and who I am now.

It worked, mostly. Randy's words started making sense as he recapped our session. But I didn't feel completely adult. When I hugged him goodbye, I wanted him to reassure me, to tell me he didn't think I was a bad girl, to promise to talk to my parents and tell them that. But I was enough of an adult to keep those thoughts to myself.


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The truth isn't all it's cracked up to be

From October 2009:


I kinda got dragged into therapy. It started out with members of our family seeing the therapist because of a family crisis. Then, during a session where it was just me, something really triggering happened and it seems like the next thing I knew, I was having weekly sessions and trying to finally process my rape. I thought 6 sessions would pretty much fix me. I thought we'd deal with the rape only and then everything would be hunky-dory.

Wrong. I can't believe how wrong I was.

Somehow, in the context of dealing with my PTSD and rape, reading stuff, and trying to work through this mess, all these other issues started coming to the surface. Stuff I thought was no big deal. Stuff I thought I was long over. Stuff I was in major denial over. Somehow my mind-reading therapist knew all that stuff existed and was even able to figure out what some of it was before I told him.

That's bad enough. But the really hard thing is that Randy is not in favor of leaving things sealed up in a box, deeply buried. He seems to belive that some sort of toxic mess manages to ooze out and poison the rest of my life.
So yesterday we were dealing with the contents of one of those boxes. After I'd finished reading my journal to him, he started restating what I'd written.

I tried to argue with his choice of words, but I had to admit he was being accurate.

"You're making it sound so horrible!" I protested.

"It was horrible," he said.

I left the session feeling, for the most part, that sense of relief that comes from unburdening painful secrets and not having the therapist gasp in horror and disgust. Unfortunately that didn't last all that long. Feelings I didn't even know I had hit me like a sledgehammer.

The grief and anger is kinda overwhelming right now.

I've spent all my life carefully maintaining this fiction that my family was near-perfect and I had a near-perfect childhood that was marred only by school. My parents were wonderful. It made no sense that we had issues because our parents were the best parents in the world. My brother was the best brother.

For some reason, Randy wasn't buying this idyllic picture. He didn't think, for example, that my depression at age 14 was just teenage moodiness brought on by my making a big deal out of nothing. He didn't think I was humorless and over-sensitive.

Gradually stuff has come out. I've disclosed some really painful stuff. He has used awful words to describe it, words I never wanted to attach to my family, words I'd like to argue with but can't.

So I'm grieving over the loss of that near-perfect family. I'm grieving over having to admit that some of the people I love the most in the world hurt me in ways I can't bring myself to write about. I'll never have an answer to my question of "Why did you do all that? How could you?" I've lost this pretty picture I had painted and, in it's place all I have is confusion, grief, and anger.


It does get better. It's a painful process, facing the ugly truth, but it is the only way to healing. It's worth it...eventually.


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Protective or controlling?

I completely bought into my mother's stories, that became family lore, of how wonderfully protective my older brother was of me.

Sheldon was the first to burst my bubble. For years, whenever I would tell some tale of supposed protectiveness, he would say, "You'd get angry if I did that." His words baffled and annoyed me. I thought it was a lame excuse on his part for not being protective -- by blaming it on me.

Finally, after I'd been in therapy for awhile, Sheldon spelled it out for me: "Damien was not being protective; he was being controlling." He re-interpreted some of my favorite stories in that light. It made sense.

Randy agreed. He even went further. "He didn't protect you from himself. In addition, when he should have been protecting you as an older brother, he insisted on getting you involved in porn, cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs." He told me a story of an older sibling protecting him when they were in their teens as a way of offering contrast.

It was painful to give up that nice fantasy.

Recently, I had to face the same truth about my mother. She prides herself in her "over-protectiveness" of us. It finally dawned on me that each example of that involved her not allowing us to go places or do things, often because she would worry. It seemed more about protecting herself from worry. But it's not just that...every instance involved her controlling us, especially me.

She didn't protect me from my older brother's bullying, even the times she observed it directly. She didn't protect me from being controlled by him. When I was bullied and teased at school, no motherly protective instinct kicked in; instead, she found it either amusing or too trivial to bother with.

Worst of all, she had no qualms about sending me back to live in the same apartment building as the men who raped me when I was 23. It didn't trouble her at all that every time I looked out my window or walked to and from my apartment, the apartment where I'd been raped stared me in the face. She didn't care that my rapists lived so close to me, that we couldn't help seeing each other, running into each other at the mailbox or in the laundry room. In her defense, maybe she thought they had lost interest in me after raping me and thus no longer posed a threat...or maybe she naively thought they only raped women they lured into their apartment. But she saw no need to protect me from the anguish of seeing them again.

Years later, when I asked her whether she worried about me living there, she waved her hand dismissively. She claimed she thought the older one had left immediately, rather than a few weeks later. She wasn't at all worried about the younger one. Why was I making such a big deal about it? After all, they left me pretty much alone after the rape.

Protective? No. Controlling? Yes.

Not that long ago, she was telling some stories from my childhood. "I was so protective!" she said. "People always said I was over-protective!" Then she told me about all the things she didn't let us do...normal kid stuff that, as a parent, I delighted in letting my kids do. I wanted them to experience exuberant play, even if it meant getting dirty, some messes, a few skinned knees, and a few rips in their jeans. My face must have betrayed my feelings because my mother said defensively, "I did let you talk in your rooms!"

Oh, wow, I guess she wasn't a complete tyrant then!