I begrudgingly awake to the familiar prickly feeling of anger stabbing at my chest, followed by a nauseous burning that signals my acid reflux is now awake too. FML is pretty much my first thought, but then, looking over at my three sleeping dogs (surrogate children) I am filled with love and motherly instincts and oxytocin, enough to get me out of bed and take them down for their walk. Its 6am when we return, and I have already grappled with six different trains of thought that are all wanting my attention at the same time and are equally useless. Bastards. Its quite something to do your own head in, because you cant escape from your own bloody brain, you are stuck with it. I want to try and savour the silence with my coffee, because at 8am the builders start drilling and I lose the will to live. I download a decibel measuring app and am not shocked to see it reads 109. I complain to the site manager and he gives me some noise defender earphones, which is a part result, I guess.

Unfortunately I have not been sleeping well which is hugely detrimental to my mental health, leaving me with little choice but to either; re-read one of my favourite books ( I have to be on full mental capacity to start a new one, which I find near-impossible) finish painting my bedroom ( but that would involve walking to the paint store and I cant handle that today, or I could order it off amazon but just cant seem to get round to doing that, keep talking myself out of reasons to finish what I started-story of my life) I could draw…but who am I kidding, my productive days are five a month if I’m lucky. Other activities for what I call a ‘non-functioning day’ include, but are not limited to; sitting on the sofa and disassociating for a couple of hours staring into space and feeling nothing, chain smoking cigarettes on the balcony, only finishing half and then lighting another ( a great ADHD trick) obsessively making coffee while half arsedly watching some crap on Netflix and trying blindly to fight the intrusive thoughts, or if its really bad, curling up in a ball in bed and wishing I didn’t exist.

I desperately want to go out for a long walk, but my brain will not compute. I lay like a catatonic caterpillar across the sofa feeling like a slug, wanting very badly to get up, to move, but to no avail. Computer says no. As mid afternoon clocks around, I am on my fifth Lavazza which does nothing to stimulate me, it barely touches the sides. I cannot nap, for if I do, I will awake completely out of sorts with a headache and bitter taste in my mouth, in an even fouler mood than before. I try to comfort myself, to do some of the old self-soothing, I put on my ‘night rain’ playlist and imagine myself in a wooden hut in a deep green moss filled forest.

If its a really shitty day I return to bed, as these days I am trying to be less hard on myself, and I know by experience that you cannot milk a stone. What I mean by that is, if I’m having a bad day mentally, which is very often, I have learnt that it is better not to fight it, there is always tomorrow. Its a gamble, my brain, and like Forrest Gump’s box of chocolates, you never know what you’re gonna get. Sometimes it surprises me, throws me a curveball ‘ right, bitch! today you are gonna slay and get so much work done and its all going to be sunshine, unicorns and self love! OMG I love those days, rare though they are, they are magnificent. For on those sacred days, I can write non-stop for hours, I can paint and take the dogs on long walks, I am free. For me, ADHD is like living in a gilded cage of my own making, even though the door is open, on bad days I just cant seem to fly out.

Intrusive thoughts are mind shatteringly horrific. All these ‘the intrusive thought won’ memes are an absolute joke and making a total mockery of people who suffer with this frighting disorder. I’m getting better at telling the thoughts to do one now, rather than going down their rabbit hole, because I understand myself better since I was diagnosed. But I have to find things to occupy my mind in order to have more control in there, and I can find nothing that its interested in. My mind is very choosy, a picky eater, and sometimes, a snob. I think of it as a spoilt kept wife who never has enough, always wanting more more more or a fussy, snotty toddler screaming nonstop, man it gets loud in here. Especially with the constant high pitched squeal in both my ears, from tinnitus and fracturing my skull as a teenager.

Since I stopped drinking three years ago, I go to bed at around 9pm latest and get up at 5am. Its annoying as hell and I don’t like it but cant seem to change the pattern. I know 9pm is early and I wake up enough times in the night to prove this, but its like a safety blanket in a way. I spent a lot of my life up-all-night and now if I manage to stay up to say, eleven, I get mad anxiety. I was meant to make a very simple phone call a week ago and have been putting it off, but today they contacted me and I was forced to speak with them, which made me so anxious that I vomited shortly afterwards. I do a little run-down of things I am grateful for in my life, which makes me feel instantly better, but I still cant summon the will to cook something. This is sad for me because I adore cooking, trained by the top Nonnas’ in Sicily, but it requires a certain amount of dopamine that it seems I’m running dry on today. Bah!

8pm rocks up and sure enough, I become drowsy and long for the oblivion of sleep. Ah well, there’s always tomorrow.