I fixate on thoughts when I don't take my meds. I was having a tough time even sitting down to write about my thoughts I was fixated on until I took my pill this morning. And that's what ADHD is sometimes. A paralyzation of converting thought into action.
But hey there Twitchy Mister- get back on point, your talking about your sister.
Yes I am and in truth I don't want to hate her. However, I have a pile of reasons why I had to cut her out of my life and why I can profess to you the reader, that the one person in this world who shares my childhood, my DNA and my heritage is persona non grata in my life.
But here's the good part- I am smarter than her.
When I was a kid, my Mom explained to me that my sister resented me. Things came to me much easier. My sister would spend a month reading a book and writing a book report and I would read the dust cover the night before and write a report 10 minutes before school. She would get a A minus and I would get a B Plus. And that pretty much sums up our entire academic career together. She worked much harder than I did, but I had much easier time at getting comparable success.
That resentment bore out in both overt violence and passive aggression as well. She hated me back.
When we played Atari, she kicked my ass. I was lousy at video games and still am to this day. My Doctor asked me if I had difficulty with video games growing up because when they were doing the neuro-testing on me, my executive functioning was so bad that he worried that I had suffered a stroke. A Cat Scan proved that I am not a stoke patient, I am just incredibly bad at hand eye coordination. And playing video games is one of those things that I suck at badly. But it wasn't just that she was better than me at Atari, she taunted me and tortured me when she won, which was every day. She would laugh at my awkward failure and when I got pissed, would condescend to me and goad me into playing again so we could rinse and repeat for hours at a time, for months on end.
When we got to high school, her resentment turned into outright disgust. I had friends and a social life, she was called "Quaker Woman" and taunted by her classmates because she was dressed like Laura Ingles from Little House on the Prairie instead of Madonna circa 1987. I played sports, got a Letterman's jacket and a class ring, she latched on to the Captain of the Football team and withered in his shadow for protection from the coven of girls who tortured her. The net effect created a very angry and bitter young woman who launched from high school to a less than glowing performance in college and then into the arms of her High School Football Captain Husband, whom she divorced when the warranty on her starter marriage ran out.
The adult years only solidified the contempt we have for each other and when did have to speak, at funerals and will readings, she spoke in a condescending teacher tone speaking to a kid that she really thinks is useless but is not allowed to tell him to his face. When my wife was introduced to her at my Uncles Funeral, she congratulated us on our marriage and thanked my wife for marrying me because "he was always so lonely in the past".
As I said, I have pile of misgivings about my sister and if she died tomorrow I think the flying monkeys that guard her castle would rejoice. But this is Feel Good Friday and here's the happy ending.
I have ADHD.
I also have a masters degree which I was the first to achieve in our family, A captains license, a happy first marriage and I graduated in higher spot than she did in High school. I also attended the United States Coast Guard Academy, founded a Non Profit which helped thousands of people and I also have hard proof that Mom and Dad loved me best.
My sister is a bitter shell of a woman, who hates God even more than she hates me. But I think in life, I have been pretty successful. I have been successful despite my ADHD which I think has hampered my progess just a bit. But I kind of look at my relationship with my sister like the scene in a Princess Bride where Inigo Montoya and the Dread Pirate Roberts are sword fighting. The Spaniard says to the Pirate Wesley, "You are amazing, its a shame I going to have to kill you". Wesley laughs and replies, "I know something you don't, I am not left handed."
Megan, I know something you don't, I have ADHD.
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