Moods

Yesterday I was down all day. I didn't leave my house until 7 pm, when I was meeting my ex to study. I am realizing quite how upsetting getting retested was for me. There were such mixed feelings. I want to test well. I want to perform really well. But I also want to have a validation that there was a specific reason that I have the challenges I have. Otherwise I fall back into self-criticism, which isn't useful. Will this testing be useful? I hope so. The more I think about it, the more I wish I were diagnosed at a young age. I have some vivid painful memories of teachers telling me to try harder, that I could make it neat, make it pretty, put it together right, and I just couldn't.

There was one particular chemistry teacher I had who pulled me aside after class to ream me out for having turned in messy work. This was work that I had stayed up until two painfully typing (this was before typing was the norm) so it would be readable and I redid the graphs so many times so it would be neat. But it just wasn't able, no matter how many times I tried. I remember leaving class and trying not to cry.

There were other episodes, in other classes. People just don't get that while you can be smart in many ways, it may be beyond their capabilities to figure out how to center something on a page and plan it out. To hear again and again that I wasn't trying, that I could fit in if I wanted to, that they didn't understand why I wouldn't bring papers home, start projects earlier, just do my math homework, etc. You start doubting yourself, you label yourself, it's not healthy. Honestly, it has been really hard. I try, so hard, all the time, and it isn't seen because what I have to try at is what comes naturally to others and what they have to try at, comes easily to me.

So because I was so down yesterday (and let me tell you that job hunting in a tough market is adding to it. Any nurse managers out there looking for someone? Especially someone with a fair amount of experience in thoracic surgery/pulmonary medicine? Drop me a comment.) I called my therapist and made an extra appointment. I've been going every two weeks, but the past couple of weeks I've gone every week. This week I was going to go back to every two weeks, but I don't think it is such a good idea.