Today I ‘ave been mostly getting a referral to an ADD
clinic. No, not for La Child, although Lord knows that wouldn’t be a massive
surprise, would it? No, for me. Moi. The grown up, sensible, healthy (I didn’t
say ‘fit’, stop sniggering at the back there) member of the family.
I’m not quite sure what to make of it.
It’s not as if the referral came as a massive
surprise. I didn’t walk in saying ‘Doctor, doctor, I have the sniffles,’ only
for her to turn around and say ‘Right then, it’s the ADD clinic for you.’ That
would be a crap joke. I was aware that by saying to the doctor ‘here is my list
of symptoms, do you think it might be ADD?’ a referral might ensue. It’s more
that I’m in two minds (oh, ha ha, very funny, I see what you did there) about
whether I’m wasting everyone’s time.
I realise that a little background may be necessary,
so sit down children, make yourselves comfortable, pass around that plate of
apple quarters and let me tell you a story. Ever since always I’ve had trouble
concentrating. Focus has been an issue. My mother used to say, as La Wife
currently does (and as I do if anyone asks), that I get bored easily. Scarily
easily. I flit from thing to thing. I get terribly interested in something,
anything, for a very brief period of time and then I move on. I’ve always
thought that this may have something to do with me just finding it very easy to
learn stuff. I pick things up very quickly, so I need to keep moving on from
thing to thing. But that’s the macro level. The very same thing happens at the
micro level. As I write this blog my mind wanders to other things: what work
should I be doing, how much should I be charging that client, I wish it would
stop raining, where has my boss disappeared to, where the Hell is that noise
coming from, how do I stop it, what happens if I hit it, I wonder if La Wife
has received my text yet, ooh, ooh, what time is it, have I missed that
meeting, where’s my building pass, my glasses are annoyingly dirty, what’s
happening on Facebook, I wonder what the trains will be like tonight, and so on
and on and on and on. Getting to the end of a sentence is murder; getting to
the end of this blog will be a marathon. Getting through a day is a frustrating
exercise in plate spinning. It’s a miracle I ever made it through school, let
alone university, professional exams, a career, life.
But that’s precisely why it is that I wonder whether
in truth I’m wasting everyone’s time. Because I did get through school, and I
did get through university, and I did get through my professional exams, and my
career, and life (so far). I just get bored. Doesn’t everyone?
But then again, let’s look at the symptoms: difficulty
focusing, work takes longer than it should, attention to detail must do better,
commitment to getting stuff finished slightly lacking; difficulty focusing on
conversations, worry so much about concentrating on what someone’s saying that
by the end of the sentence you realise that you haven’t heard half of it, or zone
out half way through a conversation and get shouted at for not paying attention
(by La Wife mainly); chronic impulsivity, do now, worry later, I’ve even bought
a house impulsively (‘yeah, fine, it’ll do,’ etc), and I certainly tend to say
stuff I almost immediately regret. And the tapping, good God the tapping. I
can’t sit still. Drives La Wife mad. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap
tap. That and the Italian bouncing leg of tedium. And the continuous fiddling
with something, anything. Maybe there’s something in this.
The alternative is that I’m just a rude bugger. An
impolite sort beset by a low boredom threshold. Which would just make me a
horrible person, and it’s certainly not what I want to be, so by definition I
can’t be, because otherwise I wouldn’t care, would I?
Except I don’t always care. Empathy levels: negligible
to none. Worrying about other people requires effort, work, attention, and I
don’t have much of those to spare. So perhaps I am just a rude bugger. Who
knows?
Hopefully the consultant to whom I’m being
referred knows. And if it is ADD? Well, then probably nothing. I
seem to have managed to reach the ripe young age of [not important, nothing to see here, move along, move along] without
assistance so I’ll probably continue in that manner. It would just be nice to
know.
And if it isn’t ADD? Well, then I’m just a rude
bugger. Tap tap tap.
No comments:
Post a Comment