Due to AuDHD, my posts suffer from a several-day lag! Classes started again today, so of course it’s time to write a post 😂😂! One of my required classes is Literary Theory, and I don’t care for that at all. I just finished Critical Approaches to Lit last year before break and while I got an A, I didn’t like or understand it. I have trouble thinking like that, as I have trouble thinking like the neurotypicals.
What they see or don’t see is often not going to coincide with what I see or don’t see. This occurs in my life regularly, which I never think about unless/until I’m around “normal” thinkers. Adam is getting very attuned with how I think and feel and I still manage to surprise him. Then again, I surprise myself oftentimes.
May (2002) – See Me!
In other news, I got back on Reddit but they don’t know that. Skirting a perma-ban is super annoying and I’ve been working on doing that since I was banned. It’s just so dehumanizing, especially when one doesn’t deserve it. What they do (without readily admitting it) is something called shadowbanning. On the user’s end, everything looks hunky-dory but the user is the only person who can see any comments they make as well as upvotes and downvotes. You’re basically talking to yourself without knowing it unless you all of a sudden notice no activity good or bad. It may not be a big deal to regular people, but to agoraphobic hermits, that connection means a lot. Plus, I had several NFT avatars that I own, free and paid, and they are locked to my banned Reddit accounts. I like those avatars 😢.
Reddit is made up of some super weird and lame people but there are also some pretty cool ones occasionally if you dig deep enough. The lame ones are the overwhelmingly liberal and sub moderators. Like, a lot of moderators will outright ban users if the users have and use the NFT avatars. How messed up is that? I don’t know why I would miss that kind of interaction and engagement, but it gets pretty boring with just my husband and me. The cats don’t talk much, and Nev mostly looks at me with his head cocked to the side when I’m talking to him. Cute but not responsive.
I think I answered something similar before. Regardless, I was incredibly attached to my Pillow People person that my grandma got me for Christmas when I was around 3 or so. She got all 9 grandchildren a different one. I have the one with blonde hair and pink “dress.” My brother had the boxer with the black eye. I named mine Susie after a dear friend’s mom and would not sleep without her, especially because her feet were silk. If I left her at a family member’s house, I would throw a fit unless we went back, much to my dad’s dismay and anger.
I still have Susie and she is on the bed right now. She’s been washed, lost her sewn-on socks and yarn hair, has been restuffed, had her legs reattached, restuffed some more, and most recently, Neville tore her handle/strap off and I had to perform back surgery on her 🤬🤬. I’ve had her for over 3 decades and not once has she been assaulted by a pet. Her material is very fragile now and I don’t know if she would survive another round in the washer. I’m not good at sewing, so she is looking pretty rough. I didn’t do so hot on her back surgery, either, but she’s not losing stuffing, so I can’t complain.
Disclaimer: This post might make me sound stupid or naïve, but I don’t care. It’s my small sliver of the Internet and my current thoughts 😊.
I really don’t “get” war. When I watched Game of Thrones, I found it weak and pathetic when they had “to the death” matches and the people had proxies fighting in their place. There may be actual words for what I’m talking about but I don’t know them and don’t feel like looking them up. Then, I was thinking today. . . we do the same thing. Actually, that’s going to bug me, so I will look it up.
Okay, so trial by combat/trial by battle is what I see for the Game of Thrones thing. Doesn’t sound much better than “to the death” matches, so I’ll stick with mine. Anyway, global-wide, that’s what we still do to this day. I get that it may have been necessary at one point in time, but it’s 2024. Can’t we just give it a rest?
I respect the heck out of our military people. They put themselves on the frontline for people they will never meet and do so willingly. They help in times of natural disasters and crises without asking for a thing from us civilians. But to be told that you are being sent to another country to literally kill people you’ve never heard of or met because your overlords want “power,” are unhappy or slighted about something, and you are being told to do the same? What the actual hell?
If the people demanding these proxy wars were forced to fight for themselves, they would be scrambling to find a solution to whatever bug was up their butt that day. Leave the innocent out of it. On top of that, these militarians see and do things most people will never see or do in a lifetime, just to come home and be labeled murderers and worse.
I wasn’t around for Vietnam (my uncle was there), but the only thing I feel for those soldiers is extreme sadness and injustice. These American boys were unceremoniously plucked from their homes and plopped into extremely foreign territory and told to kill. For their sacrifice, they were promised (if they made it home alive) healthcare, GI bills, and a pat on the back with hardly much follow-through on most promises. What??
Now, many, many kids fresh out of high school can’t control themselves enough to transition from living with their parents/families to living essentially on their own in dorms, fraternities, or off-campus while attending college. Why would anyone, especially flippin’ leaders of a country, think it would be a good idea to strap them with guns and explosives? Not to mention, Vietnam was a pretty dirty war with Agent Orange on our side and the strapping of explosives to women and children and using them as their own little kamikazes, on the Vietcong’s side, but I won’t get into that.
After seeing and being involved in atrocities beyond our comprehension, these boys were sent home to folks with appallingly misplaced anger calling them murderers, baby killers, rapists, and whatever vile thing the reactionary brainless could think of. Who does that? How can someone say they are all for “peace,” then turn around and spout such hate to soldiers who did not choose to go to war? I just don’t get it; sadly, I think about it often. I am against war, but I am not going to berate and hate on those who are merely doing what they are told or forced to do.
Because people learn absolutely nothing from history, the same thing is going on today on a bigger scale thanks to the Internet, which really grinds my gears. You cannot publicly state that you feel for one or both sides of the current goings-on between Palestine and Israel. If your comment gets any sort of traction, you’re virtually torn apart at best and meet serious consequences that impact your entire life in worse cases (most recently, the Harvard students that are being blacklisted and strong-armed).
I don’t understand how this can be happening and people still say they don’t know how Nazism spread to people who were against Hitler. It’s the same concept going on but with connectivity and globalization making it worse. I will not be told who I can have sympathy for. I don’t really have much to lose, however.
That is a good question I’m unsure how to answer. I can get very creative when something breaks or I want to do something but don’t have the correct tools or instruments. Helping Phin (the blind one) around the house has brought out my creative side because I have to make sure he can get up where he wants to go and get down without hurting himself. One place he likes to go is on the refrigerator, and he has jumped down from it before, but I’m so afraid he is going to hit the table or chair if he miscalculates his jump.
I’ve been taking apart furniture I want to get rid of and saving the wood in case I want to make something, so I took some shelves from an old bookshelf and got some brackets and Adam fashioned some shelves that go from the fridge around the wall and onto a cupboard. Theo loves them and gets on the fridge now, but Phin won’t use them even though we’ve spent time helping him find a safe way down using the shelves🙄. Now, when he wants down, he meows and Adams gets him. I can’t reach the top of the fridge so Phin’s stuck until his daddy comes.
Another thing I came up with was a sling for the babies when they were tiny because they wanted held a lot, and mostly when I was working. I took a couple of Adam’s crew socks and a COVID face mask and sewed the mask to the socks. The babies loved it and I was able to work. Theo still likes to be held from time to time so I bought an actual sling for small animals, but he loved the one I made until he outgrew it.
A great solution unless both babies wanted held at the same time
Otherwise, my creativity comes out through words. Words, spelling, and grammar make up my special interest, so it’s not a big surprise. I’ve been writing stories and poetry since I was very young and I’m definitely the writer in the family. I can draw if I’m looking at something (like the AristoCats below), but writing comes easily to me and is what I’m most passionate about.
The AristoCats
When I decided to return to college, I tried to major in something that would benefit work or lay the foundation for a new career path, but that just resulted in me switching majors four times. After my brother died and I started school again, I decided to stop denying myself and go with my passion. My studies in poetry class reignited my love for poetry, which I was hoping for, so I chose poetry as my concentration under an English creative writing major. I didn’t care for screenplay writing at all 😝. Oddly enough, I don’t really like reading poetry, especially modern poetry like Frost, Whitman, and Dickinson. I’m extremely unrefined. Dr. Seuss hits the spot for me, and I’ve only recently been learning how to forego the rhyming and do some free verse. I did discover Rupi Kaur and like her poetry very much.
Speaking of, my book of poetry will be coming out in 2024!! I am so excited, scared, and proud, and kind of sad. Mom really wanted to see me published and I hate that she is missing the chance, but she is my driving force and I know she would be proud of me. I gave myself until December 2024 with the Library of Congress because I want to take more poetry classes and get some more poems written. I have a bad habit of throwing stuff away, and that includes poems I’ve written over the years, so my collection sits at around 50 poems.
I would love to be the poetic JK Rowling, but I don’t have those expectations and am wanting to do this for myself and Mom. I keep telling Adam that my writing won’t get recognized until after I die, which is shockingly common with poets. Sometimes it feels like poetry is a lost art, but I see such great work online and really love that it’s alive and well.
This dog stuff, man. I don’t know how or why people do it! Firstly, around 25% of Labradors have a gene mutation where their brains don’t tell them when they are full. They are always hungry, and this was familiar to me because of a CSI episode, which was about a human, but still. So, Neville is one of the 25%, of course. He thinks he is always famished and tries to eat everything. Part puppy behavior, part gene flaw. I remember the simpler times when we just had cats and had to only worry about someone pooping on the floor. Now, we have to worry about what Neville ate.
Begging for popcorn. Note the white cheddar dustings on his nose.
It started with my MamaBear Unpapers, which are cute cloth swatches that I bought instead of using toilet paper. With the bidet, disposable toilet paper isn’t such a necessity. So, he ate one of those, threw it up with a section of his leash, ate it again (his vomitus) before Adam could get it, then threw it up a second time a few hours later. I put the remaining ones out of his reach, or so I thought, and he got a second one! I haven’t seen it since. He just tried to eat our expired debit card this morning after I missed the trash can when throwing it away.
He ate the end of my Dyson cord/plug, we are assuming, because we cannot find it anywhere. My $600 Dyson Pet ball vacuum (whatever it’s called) that I got in 2014 and still works wonderfully. I cried when I discovered that yesterday. Adam Frankenstein’d it using a section of cord and the plug from something else, so it still works, but…come on! Why? I feed this dog twice a day and he gets training treats and scraps. He has gained 25 pounds since we got him on October 14! To hear him tell it, we feed him maybe once every two weeks. He’s gotten his treat containers twice and opened them and emptied them. He’s nearly as tall as I am so I’m not great at putting things out of his reach.
We have confiscated batteries, Theo’s fuzz balls, my shorts, two rolls of paper towels, pop boxes, pop cans, bowls, lids, his brand-new pink brush, etc… He is like Superman; whenever I drop anything, he swoops in and grabs it. He got a hold of my Pillow People, Suzie, that I have had since I was 5 years old and ripped the handle off of her back. I had to perform surgery on her, and she already looked rough since I’ve slept with her since I got her.
He is still doing well with drop it and leave it if he doesn’t really want something. When he doesn’t want to part with an item, he will come to me and sit down with his back to me but still have the item. We have been working on “Give it to me,” and he does so — grudgingly — especially if it’s one of his toys, which makes sense since they are his toys.
He has chewed through his indoor leash three times. We just kept tying it to his collar and it was getting shorter and shorter until we couldn’t tie it anymore. It reminded me of Robin Hood: Men in Tights when Robin and Little John are fighting with sticks and they keep breaking, iykyk 🤣🤣. I have a new chain leash waiting at the post office, which I have a feeling I am going to enjoy seeing his shock and disappointment when he can’t break it.
Most of the time when he disappears from the room and returns with something, I can say, “Whatcha got? Give it to me,” and he brings it to me and drops it in my hand, which I find to be very impressive, especially for a 6-month-old. He has a bit of an anger management problem, which is pretty funny but I try not to laugh. When he has to give something up, he will pick up one of his toys and shake his head side to side vigorously, venting his frustration, I guess. I gave him a big wearable panda head that Adam thought I would like but I just think is super creepy, and Nev looks so funny carrying that around and shaking it. He wants for nothing and I exercise him, so I don’t know why he wants to chew/eat/destroy everything he finds.
The after-potty!
He’s too cute to stay mad at for too long but he tries his darnedest. He does really well when I’m upset or not feeling well and I sit on the floor to hug him. He gives hugs, but he also will sit there and let me hug him and kiss on him. He still wants to lick our faces, and I swear his tongue is 6 feet long. I call him Freddy Krueger because he needs his nails trimmed (nail clippers are at the post office, too) and he can really scratch without meaning to.
I love the little guy regardless of how rotten he is. He is very smart and learning so much. The apps and YouTube videos are a great help but we’re getting the basics down first and haven’t started on the therapy/service part of his training. I may be singing a different tune by then!
So, this has been a trip. The dog…Neville is smart and rotten and gangly and funny and sweet, and so much more. I think I’m in over my head with the training stuff. I’ll be dead before I get him trained as a service dog! It’s not him — he is surprisingly responsive and determined. I, however, have never trained a dog in my life and still don’t know how to approach it.
Some trainers say to teach one thing at a time, and some say to teach different things at a time. Some want me to crate the poor boy whenever I can’t have eyes on him every minute. He wasn’t too happy about being crated and whined and howled when he was in there for less than 5 minutes.
Pondering life.
The first thing I taught him was “leave it,” per Pupford Academy, and he does very well with that, but he thinks that he is supposed to leave something for a minute or two and then he gets it. That is fine when it’s treats or toys, of course, but when I dropped something and he went for it, I told him to leave it and he listened right away until I said “Good boy,” which is what I say in training to let him know he can get the item, so he picked it up 🤣🤣. I’m confusing both of us!
He gets bored, I guess (when I try to play with him, he lies down and chews on his toy) and brings me all kinds of things while I’m working. He brought me his water bowl, which I thought was because it was empty but it turned out he just dumped it while picking it up, so now his bowl is taped to a piece of wood because he did it again. I think it’s because the bowl was in the kitchen and not in the bedroom, but I don’t know; I’m not a dog. He keeps bringing me the bathroom trash can. He has chew toys and squeaky toys, yet grabbed my iPad and started gnawing on the cover 🤦♀️. He was going to take a gallon jugful of water somewhere; had it by the handle and everything.
Waiting for popcorn.
The other day, he learned “drop it,” and started to learn how to place his chin on my leg, which will be something I want him to do when I’m overwhelmed. Oh, and he did “drop it” so well! He grabbed the cats’ pooper scooper, and I told him to drop it. He sat down, opened his mouth, and let it fall to the floor, then sat there and looked at me, waiting for a treat. It definitely wasn’t just a startled response from me speaking, and I was so proud of him.
Adam got in on some of the training and seems to think it’s going well. Nev’s getting very good at dropping things for me and the chin command I introduced. He tries to get away with barely tapping his chin on my leg to get his treat but he will leave it there after a few attempts. The first day he was here, he knocked me over when I was sitting on the floor and got on me, which is what I want him to do for deep pressure therapy, but he did it just to hang out and be loved on. He gets pretty distracted by the cats.
Okay, so I didn’t know the 30-Day Mindset Journal Challenge was going to focus on one theme a week at a time. I don’t know if my ADHD self has it in me to wax poetic about the same subject for seven days. Needless to say, we’re still talking about gratitude, and I’m all gratituded out. Also, I am incredibly tired of waiting for the exciting thing that is coming up and I just want it to be now. I’m failing my challenge spectacularly and not writing every day, but I am working and going to school full-time, so I expected as much. My 30-day challenge may take me 60 days but I’m cool with that 😂.
Day 3: Gratitude
What Makes You Happy?
I’m not really a happy person but some things do make me happy. Water makes me very happy. When I went to Niagara Falls with my ex when he was an OTR truck driver, it was the most awesome, peaceful experience I had ever encountered. Just standing there watching the water was crazy soothing for me. I’ve always loved water; seeing it and being in it.
Oddly, I cannot swim on top of water, like Michael Phelps, but I have been swimming underwater since my dad threw me off the diving board before I could walk. I didn’t ask him to do that but it worked 🤷♀️. I love watching the little waterfalls on the side of the mountains in my state when it rains, I love rivers and streams and ponds. I love the sound of water. I think I should have been a fish.
I’m not sure if it was the happiest I’ve been, but the most peaceful and exhilarating thing I’ve done was riding the Slotzilla Super-Hero Zoom Zoomline in Las Vegas. This was after Mom died and I decided to book us for the zoomline on a whim when I was planning our vacation. It’s quite odd because I don’t do well with heights at all. I get dizzy and nauseated standing on a chair or stool. Adam had to come help me off the side of Mom’s garden tub when I was painting and could not put my hand on the wall for support because I had just painted it. I hated going up in the arch in Missouri and had to go back down almost immediately after getting up there. It’s bad.
I was feeling a bit reckless after Mom died, and I was excited about the zoomline until we were halfway to the loading platform. We got strapped in, Adam was in his harness across from me, and I made the mistake of looking down while lying on my harness. (Shrek? I’m looking down!) Instant tummy rumbles and vertigo. Adam or the guy fastening me in noticed my anxiety and told me to look out in front of me and not below me, so I did and the vertigo ceased. Then, we were off!
Still having doubts before we go!
It. Was. Amazing!! It was so freeing and calming, and I’ve not experienced anything like it before or since. I could have spent the week doing nothing else but flying over Fremont Street. I was able to look down while I was in motion and could see people waving up at us but even briefly closing my eyes and taking in the feeling of flying was so cool. That was in 2015 and I still remember how it felt. I don’t know if the zipline, which is another option, would have been the same for me and I’m glad I chose the former.
The worst thing about our vacation aside from us both getting sick halfway through was flying. We flew with Spirit, and the plane was much smaller than what I had been on prior (I didn’t like that flight, either, and was wrapped around my mom’s arm until we landed) and the turbulence was worse in a smaller plane. The Spirit flights were only 4 hours each way and felt like forever. It was Adam’s first time flying and he wasn’t phased.
Other things that make me happy are Adam, the kiddies, my cousins, concerts, reading, pink, music, the smell of Febreze, and more that I can’t think of at the moment. I think falling in love is a pretty awesome feeling and it’s something people in long-term relationships kind of miss. I mean, I’m totally in love with my husband, but it will never be like it was in the beginning with the anticipation and butterflies and missing him five seconds after he leaves. It’s a different kind of happiness now.
The Taylor Swift concert movie is coming up and I haven’t started on my friendship bracelets yet! I’ve never made those before but Adam is going to make some with me and I told him he would be tying mine 😂. The kit came with fishing-line-looking line that you tie or put clasps on and it’s so slick, I don’t know how it will stay tied. I guess I should get cracking on those and not wait until the last minute. Our friend who just took us to see Blue October again is going with us. I will be pretty upset if we are the only ones with bracelets to hand out.
It seems like an unspoken rule that only concert-goers trade bracelets, but there are so many of us who couldn’t afford tickets or transportation to the closest venues. I’ve never been able to afford going to a concert because it’s not just the tickets that cost money. Our closest stadiums or amphitheaters are hours away, so there is the cost of gas, hotel rooms, any concessions, and unplanned expenses. I’ve attended concerts with my aunt since we like the same music and they were fun but she paid for me. We were lucky with Blue October because they performed very close to us both times we got to see them, and even then our friend paid our way as a wedding gift and then an anniversary gift.
Day 2 of the 30-Day Mindset Journal Challenge from Seeking Serotonin focuses on gratitude, like Day 1. I don’t know what more I can say about gratitude but I guess that’s why it’s called a challenge! I’ve always been a Negative Nancy but that doesn’t mean I’ve never been grateful for anything. Sadly, I became more grateful for my mom after she died, but I don’t think that’s uncommon. I did learn to appreciate her once I became an adult, but the guilt and regret I feel for being a kid are still there. I know it’s irrational, I was a kid, but I still feel bad for how I treated her while growing up. I think that is a big part of why I never wanted kids. I knew how I acted and I know I couldn’t and wouldn’t tolerate a child who behaved like I did. Well, I couldn’t tolerate any children regardless of how they behaved. I don’t have the maternal chip, which I am totally okay with. Let’s get on with Day 2.
Day 2: Gratitude
What does gratitude mean to you?
Gratitude is a pretty straightforward concept. Having/showing gratitude means you are grateful for something or someone and you feel blessed to have that something or someone. It can be as simple as someone helping you up from a fall, giving you something you need, helping you out financially, giving you a compliment when you’re feeling down, and on and on. In my last post, I mentioned being grateful for my mom and my husband, but I’m grateful for many things and people.
I’m grateful for my psychiatrist for working with me and trying different medications until I no longer felt overwhelmingly suicidal. I am grateful for the medications that keep me alive and the insurance that keeps those medications free for me. I’m grateful for my professors who teach me even though they get terrible pay. I’m grateful for SNHU allowing me to continue school after I had to take breaks due to my brother dying and my depression. I’m grateful for my three jobs. I’m grateful for each and every kiddie that chose Adam and me to be their parents. I’m grateful for my family. I have had a hard go of it since Mom died but I’m grateful to still be here to fight through another day.
I saw something called shadow work journaling online (I have no idea what I was searching for) and decided to give it a shot. I used to have a therapist whom I loved, but she dropped me after I missed three appointments, which kind of irked me because I was seeing her for major depressive disorder and ADHD. Missing/forgetting/canceling appointments tends to happen with those disorders. It was right after my brother died, too, so that was really helpful 😒.
Anyway, I want to try the journaling here so I can pretend there is an audience and maybe stick to doing it. No promises! I’ll be using some prompts I found online, although I have the worst memory and the prompts concentrate on the past and memories, so I don’t know how that will go. Seeking Serotonin seems like a great resource and I’m going to start with the 30-day Mindset Journal Challenge. That being said, I started this post two weeks ago 😂.
Day 1: Gratitude
What am I grateful for today?
Today’s prompt is an easy one. I am overwhelmingly grateful for my husband. This guy survived a nightmare of a childhood full of violence and neglect, and he is one of the sweetest, most caring people I’ve ever had the privilege of knowing. Mom was not wrong when she called him a Godsend. He has always said that it was love at first sight when he saw me. I challenged this claim because I’ve never really believed in such a thing, but we dug my senior yearbook out, and in his note he left in the back pages, he wrote, “I will always love you.” Well, color me wrong!
Easy on the eyes, hard on the heart.
We knew each other for a school year of lunch periods — I was a senior when he was a freshman — and then reconnected nine years later on MySpace (I wasn’t a fan of Facebook). In school, he was just my friend’s dorky little brother; I was the same age as my friend, whom I had a bit of a crush on. Mom was thrilled when Adam started coming around in 2009 because he made me happy and made me laugh so much, which Mom said she had not heard in a long time. For four-and-a-half years, I was Adam’s and Mom’s world, which was pretty awesome.
Now, I can walk through the living room with a basket of clothes or a package that was delivered and this man won’t notice me walking by him. However, just today, I was getting ready to take a shower, so I turned the exhaust fan on in the bathroom, then left the bathroom to get towels, and Adam was walking through the living room with towels for me because he heard me turn the fan on. He turns the air on when he hears me get in the shower because I don’t like getting sweaty after I get out of the shower, which I tend to do.
Due to my AuDHD, shows and movies can confuse me, and I don’t want to get invested if I know I won’t understand what’s going on. Since Adam knows me better than I know myself, I ask him to watch it first to see if it’s too complicated. It may not be his cup of tea, but he will watch it and tell me his opinion. The same goes with comedies. I don’t like the F-word or movies that are too raunchy. He’ll watch them and let me know how “bad” they are. Just recently, I asked him to watch No Hard Feelings, as I really like Jennifer Lawrence but the movie was marketed as a raunchy comedy.
I could go on forever, but I suppose I won’t. I don’t know how I got so lucky. He’s a wonderful father to our kiddies and I love seeing this self-professed dog person being so sweet and loving towards our cats. Our youngest, Willow, is his girl, and she recently got in trouble for lying on my keyboard and hitting the keys on purpose even though I moved the keyboard out of the way like I always do with them. He lightly swatted her butt and told her “no” because I couldn’t get her to listen, and tears were in his eyes after he scolded her and she ran away. I mean, come on!
As always, I’m grateful for my mom. Thanks to her planning and always thinking of her children, I have a home and an acre of land that are paid off. The house taxes suck, but I would rather have those than a rent or mortgage payment each month. Considering I can barely work, my income is a joke and I would be homeless without Mom’s house. We had her car, too, until some jerkface mechanic broke it. I will be forever grateful for her and Adam.
I was born with Dandy Walker syndrome, which is a malformation in the back of the brain near the brainstem. The malformation occurs in the part of the brain (the cerebellum, fourth ventricle) that controls balance, coordination, fine motor skills, vision, and cognitive thinking. While pregnant with me, Mom was simply told that part of my brain didn’t develop and that was it. Granted, DWS isn’t common, so a lot of doctors, especially back then, hadn’t heard of it.
Now, more and more doctors and medical staff I’ve seen are at least familiar with it. One doctor even said, “So, you’re aware DWS affects your liver and kidneys?” Huh? Yeah…sure, I know. (Nope. I didn’t know.) I guess that explains the hydronephrosis, nonalcoholic liver cirrhosis, and diabetes type 1.5, the latter two of which are autoimmune diseases.
I didn’t walk until I was 2, and I was in physical therapy to help with that, but I don’t remember it. We didn’t learn I had DWS until I was 17 and my pediatrician ordered a head CT scan to see why I was having headaches all the time. Fortunately, I only have a small amount of hydrocephalus, so I don’t require a VP shunt.
I also had crossed eyes, which were surgically corrected at 18 months old, and a strawberry birthmark – a hemangioma – up from my forehead a little past the start of my hairline. My brother took care of my birthmark one night when he dropped a toy stove from the top bunkbed onto my head, which I had poked out from my bunkbed to ask him what he had said. He had, in fact, told me to watch out because he was dropping the toy from his bed and he didn’t want to hit me with it. I find this hilarious; even more so when he would tell the story. I don’t remember that, either, but I was under 5 at the time.
So, all of that to say, I have some limitations. With DWS and AuDHD, I think differently and perceive things differently and I have some problems with critical thinking, and my depth perception isn’t the greatest. I also have diplopia, which is double vision. I’ve had 3 eye surgeries and the surgeon informed me that it’s my brain mucking things up because they can’t get my eyes any straighter than they are. I must sound like a monster 😂.
My husband, Adam, didn’t know any of the above when we met in high school or when we started dating 9 years later, as my medical diagnoses are not something I openly talk about. My family is very open with each other about their health issues except when they pertain to one’s mental state, which is odd because depression and bipolar are big on the maternal side of my family. Mom’s explanation for my personality and behavior was, “Oh, that’s just Cari,” and family’s like, “Oh, okay.” I love that my family is so accepting.
Cari R Esta 