Tag: adhd

Who Am I

Well, today I feel like a vampire. Mainly because I put on makeup and it makes me even paler than usual. I’m already deathly pale because I have to use SPF 50 whenever I think about going outside.

Even then that is a loaded question. To be honest I don’t know. I’m from Finland, but I’m extremely weird. I’m a extrovert. I know several labels I have. I have disabilities. I have several autoimmune diseases. I have even more other health conditions. I have ADHD. I have fatigue. Wait, that’s not a label, that’s a symptom.

I know things I like. I like romance. I like romantasy. I like playing video games. I love cats. And to be honest any furry creatures that are supposed to have four legs. I love dressing in gothic clothes. I love vampires. I like living in the UK and writing in English. I couldn’t imagine writing in Finnish anymore. My mom feels bad she can’t ready what I write. Me, not as much considering how much smut I like to write…

I have quite a few different diagnoses. My immune system basically hates me and likes to attack my internal organs for fun. I also have things like ADHD. These things affect me every day. I have symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, weight gain and sometimes hyperactivity, inattentiveness and impulsiveness. I don’t work currently because my body seems to be running the show. I am the type who hates sitting at home and not doing much. I was raised to be always achieving things, having a job and meaning. I am trying to adjust what that means to me when I can’t do traditional 9 to 5. I try to do things from home, like get my book empire started. I also have couple of other things I try to do as well. I have a Twitch account where I occasionally play different games. I’ve got an account in Youtube for video games as well where I post twice weekly. I do those for fun, mostly. I do them for sake of doing something. I do them for learning new things and I do them to find a community for myself. My Twitch is an affiliate, so watching me stream does give me some income. If you do want to support me, go to my twitch and give me a follow. No need to subscribe unless you want to. Also I accept stickers/sound alerts, etc on Twitch. Some cost points (watch to get points) or spend some money on them. I’m also currently trying to get enough following in YouTube to monetise it. It’s a while away but check it out if vampire or supernatural theme interests you.

The vampire thing keeps coming up. I have loved them since I was a teenager. That’s when I read Bram Stocker’s Dracula. It hit a spot. Being chronically ill as a teenager wasn’t easy. Going to doctor’s appointments and taking medications isn’t something any teenager wants. I got diabetes as a kid. The inject insulin type. I wanted to be free of it. The romance of being a vampire was a little different. It wasn’t about being young forever. It was being not sick forever. Also I want to point out that Twilight creatures are not vampires. This is a hill I will die on. They are faeries pure and simple. I did not understand them as a teenager. I do love the Anna Rice vampires and I did even back then.

What about me as a writer? I like writing about FMCs in difficult situation to start with. The story will be where they figure out how to live, not just to survive. They find their inner strength and external support system they didn’t have before. They learn how to love themselves through the story. There is part that seeing themselves through someone else’s eyes that helps them get out of their own heads, but it’s not always the MMC that helps with that. It’s often friends too. I love found family trope. It shows up in almost every story I write. I like to write about conditions I have myself. I like to write about things I have struggled. I will make a separate blog post about writing so keep tuned for that if you want to read more.

If you like stories that overcome obstacles, have hope even if they start in a bad place, growth and the couple ending together, I am your writer! It’s what my life has been, dealing with health and other obstacles. Try to figure out how to become happy with all of it. It’s not easy, there are often two steps forward and ten steps back.

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Still alive

I haven’t been writing as much this summer. I’ve had a few things over the summer and most of it was regarding one or another health condition. I have been battling with ADHD this summer. I was medicated when I started this blog and I’ve been off my meds for a bit because I haven’t been able to get an appointment for them. This is basically the state of the UK mental health services, and not just because of the pandemic. It’s been like this for years.

I’ve also been battling with covid and possible long covid or worsening of my conditions. Basically, I have had more brain fog and fatigue since covid. It’s slightly getting better now with time. I definitely do not want to have covid again.

I’m writing this for my sake. I am writing this so I don’t get too anxious about writing my next real post. I have a tendency to get more and more anxious as more time goes past. And this is a note that I will write again when I feel better.

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What does my ADHD look like?

Everyone who has ADHD has different symptoms. There is some overlap between these, but the whole range of symptoms varies heavily. I have something called combined ADHD. It means I have symptoms from both inattentive and hyperactive. The symptoms I list are when I am not medicated. They change quite a bit when I am taking meds.

Things that I have struggled with the most are keeping my attention on one task for long periods of time. I will stay focused for a few minutes. I often check my phone, Facebook or Twitter. Sometimes I go to check a word or concept I thought about. Most of the time has nothing to do with what I am doing, except some weird jump of thoughts that make no sense to most people.

If I have instructions with multiple steps or steps that are very complicated, I forget half of it. I have a tendency to remember the last bits, but not the beginning. In school, the instructions were often verbal, and I had no chance. I always ask them written now if it’s possible. I will also forget to follow through with them and miss steps. I am always thinking about what to do next, so I forget what I was supposed to do now.

I feel like I hear everything and they take away my attention. I can hear the train nearby, dog parking, one of my cats just did a tiny eek sound. All this is taking away my attention as I am here writing.

I will put down something, and it will be forever lost if I don’t put my whole focus on it. I wish I was kidding. I also have a habit of leaving stuff in weird places. Again I wish I was kidding.

If I have to focus longer periods of time, I will get tired and cranky. It uses my brain in a way that it’s not meant to. To me, it’s like sprinting when you are supposed to be having a nice walk. I do also tend to walk or run too fast than it’s comfortable.

I have trouble staying seated or still. I will want to move. Even right now, my feet are rubbing against each other in order for me to keep moving while writing. I cannot sit down without having something to do. When I read for uni studies, I tend to have something in my fingers. I have a few fidget toys and they do help.

I have also a tendency to buy things when I don’t need them, just because they are pretty. I am lucky that I have a very strong sense of not buying more than I can afford, but not everyone is as lucky as I am. Dept and money problems are often part of ADHD. It doesn’t help that seeing the big picture over longer periods of time is not easy. We tend to be quite here and now creatures so the end of the month can seem a very long way away.

I hate waiting. I want things to happen here and now. One reason is that I’m impatient, but also because I will forget in the future. When I have medical appointments, I have two reminders. One for the day before, and the other an hour before I need to leave. I would be absolutely lost without my phone.

There are some things that are heavily linked to ADHD that I do struggle with. The first one is emotions. The prefrontal cortex is a big part in control and this is the part that doesn’t work like neuronormal people prefrontal cortex works and it can be measured in fMRI. It controls our behaviour, which stimuli is important, emotional response, thoughts. Some people describe it as a secretary that handles all incoming information and forwards the important to the boss, the brain. With ADHD, this secretary quit. They are not there so everything is coming full force to the brain. Because this control centre is not working full time, emotions can run amok a bit. I often feel that I get very strong emotions. When I feel happy, I am extremely happy. When I feel sad, I feel like I can never be happy. I am on a constant emotional roller-coaster ride. This is not similar to bipolar, where I understand the emotions run for days, weeks or months. For me, I can feel extreme excitement, joy, sadness and go back to the excitement, in one hour. The emotions are also distractable. The right thing can make me feel best again. And I take rejection very personally. Most of the time it is not real rejection. It’s most of the time perceived rejection or something someone says about my work, my appearance, how I talk. It can be an offhand comment, and I will feel like I am not good enough and I am being rejected.

A lot of us feel like we are not good enough. Mine comes from trying to be as good as neuronormal people. I was trying to keep up in school, at work, in life. I have had many burnouts in my life, mainly in school. I was trying to keep up with other students. I put 150% into my work and I didn’t get good grades. I worked harder than most people in my class and I wasn’t good enough. Even with my diagnosis, I still feel like I need to compete with neuronormals but it’s impossible.

If you are reading this and you do not have ADHD, I hope you can understand us a bit better. If you do have ADHD, I hoped you liked reading it. If you do not have ADHD, but a lot of this rang a bell, I’d suggest taking an online ADHD test and taking it to the doctors and asking for a referral.

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My current story

 My new story! It is about a sort of ordinary woman. She is like me! I have given her some of my traits. She has ADHD like I do. Hers doesn’t seem to be as bad as mine is. Or that is just the shock of her new situation! Stress does weird things to ADHD. 

Anyway, getting side tracked already! She is from London, and finds something odd and decides to go through it. She ends up in the middle ages with magic! She finds new people, new friends who will end up being her family! She ends up in the middle of a bad situation. The kingdom she ends up in, has a evil ruler. The normal, greedy bastard who has some evil men working for him as well. The people she is with, want to change it back to peaceful place it was before him. So, she goes with them.She helps them as much as she can, she fights with them, and gets hurt with them.

This is a story of her growth, her finding a place to belong, of her going through difficult situations and how she overcomes her trauma. There is a lot more, but I can’t tell everything in a blog! I haven’t decided what to do with the story when it’s finished. This is the first part of it though. I have enough ideas for three stories! I might selfpublish. In case I do, I don’t want to give away too much.. I will however post bits of chapters in the future! I will also post about difficulties about writing, what I have come up with and how do I keep going on with writing. With ADHD, it is a bit tricky.

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