Tags
Bipolar Disorder, Depression, DID, Mental Health, Mental Illness, Paranoid Schizophrenia, Personal Journal
Hindsight it a funny thing isn’t it? I would, if I were a betting man – which I am not, lay odds that most of us can look back to circumstances or behaviours in our childhood which we now see as clear indicators or something else.
I remember a few years back when ADHD became more prominent in the media and how so many adults considered the possibility that they themselves may have had it but gone undiagnosed as a child. I was tempted as a result of it to belief that ADHD stood for ‘As Does Hindsight Demonstrate’.
The fact is of course, that such thought processes were perfectly natural if ot always correct.
For example here’s a picture which sums up part of my childhood – well my school days at least.
And I bet I am not alone in this am I? Hours spent looking out of the school room window day-dreaming away the mundaneness of the lessons they were trying to teach me.
Which often resulted in this kind of comment (And yes this an actual scan of the comments my head master wrote on my report card way back in 1972 when I was 10.)
Or this one from the previous year and made by my form teacher…
And of course comments such as these always led to my having many a sore butt as a result of them. Although my taking a report card which said, “Could do better” and writing the words, “not with you as my teacher!” understandably earned me both a whuppin at school and also a further major whuppin at home. (Despite the fact hat is was a totally accurate comment.)
Actually, whilst I never, as far as I am aware, had ADHD, I did have mental health issues back then and the lapses of concentration were without doubt an indication of that. And interestingly only once did they and the other indicators lead to my being referred to a psychiatrist at that age.
Readers of this blog will know only too well how those “lapses in concentration are still present and still affect me today as does lapses in memory.
So much so that I am thinking of having the follow t-shirt which I designed printed up.
And even if hindsight does demonstrate something (a mental illness for example) which is still a part of your life today the beauty of hindsight is that you have had the time in between to develop new skills, talents and experiences.
Which of course is where I am today.
So today sees me trying to compensate for that lack of memory and focus or concentration and trying to establish some routine and order in my life. Yet again!
I say yet again as this is a running battle with me and sometimes I seem to lack the discipline required to stick with the routines that I try to set in place in order to combat that chaos.
But I am not going to get disheartened. It is part of my illness and I accept that and no matter how many times the plan goes awry I know that it does benefit me when it is working and so is worth working for. 🙂