Or is it just me?
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I don’t believe in ghosts, I don’t believe in ghosts, I really, truly don’t believe in ghosts!!!
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I really don’t, but sometimes, well, maybe I do!
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Okay, this post is not entirely about ghosts. It is about the ADHD brain taking something and making it much bigger than it really is. Last night (a few hours ago) I was watching my latest episode of Ghost Hunters. I love that show! Anyway, I fell to sleep and about 3am I woke up suddenly because I hear a loud bang! The sound came from the kitchen. I lay there for a few minutes, frozen, of course, my mind coming up with all kinds of scenarios (and yes, the supernatural is involved) so finally, ever so slowly, I get up and cautiously go check things out.
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Everything looks okay, nothing out of the ordinary. It seemed that way for a moment.
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So, I go back to bed and after a long while I finally fall back to sleep, but no sooner do I think I am asleep before I hear another sound, this time it is a slow creaking sound. This is starting to freak me out. I get up, all the while berating myself for watching Paranormal 3 last week and I nervously head back to the kitchen, but before I get there I notice the living room door is half open (oh!). The problem is I had just closed it! Oh, this isn’t good. Again my mind swirls and swirls with thoughts (made me dizzy), so I check the front door and make sure it is still locked. It is! Thank goodness (or maybe not)!
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Now I decided to check the living room. This is the point where I really should have turned on the lights, but of course, I must think I am ghost hunting, because instead of thinking like a normal person (which I am not), I grab my flashlight. Ah, the brilliant reality of ADHD!
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I go into the living room and I see something out of the corner of my eye! Was that a shadow? I am almost certain it was! I point the flashlight that way. Nothing is there, I thought. Now I am adequately freaked out. It’s time to turn on the lights! You would think, right? But here’s this thing when my mind is whirling with fear and anxiety and other spectacularly unhelpful thoughts, I just don’t always think straight. My ADHD brain starts to play tricks on me and I start to make little, but painful, mental mistakes. The next thing I knew I tripped over the short glass living room table. Yep, hit the corner just right – you know, in that perfect spot in the shin. Best place to hit it if you’re going to do it. That hurt like crazy! And I know it will leave a mark, after I stop the bleeding!
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Okay, finally, thanks to the sharp pain in my shin and kneeling on one knee with the other shin firmly gripped in my hands, I finally decide it is time that I might want to turn on some lights. There’s nothing here. Nothing at all. However, with the lights finally on, I figured out what happened. (If something had been there I would have been toast anyway!)
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I’ll tell you what happened in a second, but like a good ADDer that writes a blog, I want to write my thoughts on the subject first. I mean, why go back to bed when I can be writing? I’ll be sleep deprived, I know that, but I’ve got to write about this. When you have ADHD, waiting becomes impossible at times and if I don’t do what I want to do RIGHT NOW then I won’t be able to sleep anyway (how do you think all those books I write get written?).
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Can you relate? I’ll be honest, I don’t even know if anything I am writing makes any sense right now, but I do know that writing is kind of calming me back down, bringing me back to center, giving me Zen or Chi or hey, I could stop this and exercise Tai Chi instead. See, I can’t even get my thoughts in order. How are you supposed to understand them?
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Okay, this is how this all relates to ADHD and kind of reminds me of my childhood and school. Whenever I become filled with anxiety I just can’t think, or rather I think too much and thousands of thoughts erupt in my head and I can’t tame them right away. I need to walk around, investigate and sometimes walk into the side of a table with my shin in order to STOP (I should take care of that bleeding before Joan sees it). That’s why Tai Chi helps me so much, but in moments when I put myself in a frantic state all the Tai Chi in the world doesn’t help.
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Obviously, the smart thing would have been to turn the lights on first! The next best thing would have been to take a deep breath and remember that our heating system cycles at about 3am in the morning sometimes creating a loud sound exactly like the one that woke me up! Then I should have also remembered to firmly close the living room door when I went back to bed. The living room door isn’t exactly balanced and tends to slowly swing open if not closed entirely shut (debunked!). Hind sight is twenty— twenty and I can think of all the right things now, but when my ADHD gets rolling and the anxiety kicks in I can’t seem to figure out which way is up and if there’s a ghost in the house or not?
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Solution: Stop watching those addictive ghost shows! No, I need another solution. I mean, why take all the fun out of it? Anyway, I am tired and need to go back to bed, so my solution for the moment is to leave the lights on. Yeah, I know it was the heating system, but still.
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Good night.
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