I find myself back on Craigslist again, looking for revenue streams. I have my ‘thought diary’ app open so that I can challenge my aggressive self-bullying. I scroll though the words, they’re a meaningless, jumbled mess.

Imagining myself filling a job role is painful after years and years of failure. Despite the anxiety I am mentally capable of projecting a future with a job. I possess the ability to convince someone to hire me and to pay me enough money in exchange, so that I may survive.

I am not alone in a survivor’s world. We are everywhere, increasing in numbers. We are quietly hiding behind those who thrive, on high alert as we scan for secrets and hints and tools. We glean ideas from those who we assume are thriving, we emulate their exterior actions as a way forward. We take paths in hope and in strength- we say, with certainty, ‘here I will find my home.’

Ogunquit Maine was the home of sweet, dear Eleanor Young, who passed away at 99 years old two weeks ago Thursday. I spent the day immediately following her death in her house. I spent the last few days with her, I loved her. I admit I got a bit weird with her dead body and there I was with it, all 99 years of it. I don’t have a mature response to death on a physical or emotional level. I tried to keep my mouth shut about covering her up but I couldn’t. Anyways we got through the funeral and I was there and I was helpful to the family.

Her ancient ramshackle homestead is right there on route 1, across the street and next door to 2 block-long one-story hotels from a time that is in no way (other than that architecture) not now. There’s an ocean on one side, a gully on the other, and I would be remiss to not mention the culvert about 100 yards up the road, installed by Eleanor’s husband Carl a quarter of a century ago.

Eleanor’s house was once a chicken coop. It was also once across the street, on the other side of route 1. The chicken coop was moved across Route One onto a man-made foundation composed of boulders, enormous rocks and other cold, heavy earth-made materials that look nothing like walls or floors but that function as such and support a one-time chicken coop being placed on top of it lovingly by….presumably people. I need to put more research into this house but I’m afraid I’ve already fallen too much in love with it and am sure to become devastatingly heartbroken again. Iquiteverything/youquitme

The drop ceilings are only 6 1/2 ‘ tall because the roof of this chicken coop was eventually raised and a 2nd story was forced into the equation to provide space for the unexpected 2nd and then super unexpected 3rd child, born 15 years apart.

There is a repurposed, rail-less staircase adjoining the first floor from the 2nd, bolted in with steel at a 10 degree angle, adorned with homemade birdhouses. I could go on about the house for hours, its magical wrap-around porch that sags in two places, the Rhododendren out back that looks like a beautiful Pizza the Hut, the several hundred-year old oak out front that it literally supporting the entire house. The twin leather lazyboys, lovingly faded and creased but still reclining with the same magic as they did on day one.

Its a time capsule, for sure. Likely to be razed and sold to a dunkin’ donuts, to feed and medicate the families who she brought into the world. All alcoholics. Ha, took a turkey turn there. I don’t know what that is.

While I was staying at Eleanor’s House I had some very big problems with families. I would say that I am in an ongoing ‘problem with families’ run – pretty much daily- for my whole life but this past year has been a blowout marquis. I had my own family problems and then I had Eleanor’s family problems, which are very close to me but they are unique from my own but equally as clear that with a bit of information, enthusiasm, education, acceptance and focus, could be resolved and improved a gazillionbazillion times.

I have been taking adderall since October 1st, thereabouts.

I have done a good share of drugs in my lifetime. A good nice share. I never shot heroin but pretty much everything else, in pretty keen quantities. But as I am 45 years old, a midwesterner sent to a safe midwestern private college, I have only experienced my own very special 90’s era white person marketplace of drugs.

When I was in High School, in the suburbs of Chicago, my best friend and I tried weed because my brother smoked it and then we found out some cute guys smoked it too. I was a hippie in high school. I smoked a lot of weed, and dropped acid and mushrooms with with my boyfriend at the time. In college I became a drinker, and barfed consistently. Beer, so much disgusting cheap beer. But I was a valuable party queen at the dorms so WHATEVER IT TAKES! After college a few more drugs become available, I was living and working in Chicago PROPER now, away from my parents for the first time. Cocaine, Ex (that’s what we called it- it was 1998), we snorted heroine. But not ONCE did we get offered, speak about, or experiment with Adderall.

Generation X. We were a latch-key generation. I didn’t have the key around my neck but that’s only because we never left the door locked. Two working parents and a chronically ill brother, 3 years my senior. He was hospitalized several times annually with complications due to a disorder of the kidney, called Minimal Change Disease.

I didn’t even know the name of the disease until a few years ago. It was a kidney problem. That’s what it was. He would always be sick, hospitalized. And when he would get out of the hospital he would do well in school but people would make fun of him, which embarrassed me.

These are some of the things that I think about as I experiment with my adderall. I’ve been on it for 2 1/2 weeks. At first i took a pill and that was too much, then I only took half, then next day I took one and half. Then I take days off. My worldview has shifted in a very dramatic way.

It has been a WHOPPING SIX months since I last wrote. I have avoided this blog on a daily basis with the tenacity that I avoided homework in all of my classes that I ever took in my whole life. There have been days where I haven’t thought about it, but not many. I had thoughts of ‘it’s stupid’ and ‘what a dumb idea.’ I hadn’t read even one of my posts until last night. Why last night?

Reddit, of course. Reddit.

Reddit has given me a new fucking world.

I quit drinking back in April. I joined the quitdrinking subreddit and there I found out about Annie Grace’s book the Naked Mind.

The reason I wanted to quit drinking was because I had an AdHd diagnosis. My psychiatrist told me I could not be prescribed narcotics as a drinker. So I quit.

It wasn’t hard for me. Of all of the things I have struggled with, this was a breeze. I should put this under /quitdrinking for iquiteverything. Maybe someday I’ll spend some time here cleaning this pit hole up.

So it’s June, July. August. I have an adhd diagnosis, which was not enough for me. I wish it was enough. To be told you have something, For me to be told I have something- it doesn’t mean I understand what it is.

I did research and was like “yes. that’s me. Yes. That’s me” So I started feeling like ok I have a community of like minded people here.

I went through my medicaid phone listing for psychiatrists in my neighborhood. I called all of the numbers. I then went to Kings County Behavioral Health Walkin Clinic which was a freaking TRIP. Two teenagers on heroin begging for cookies at the front desk, spouting bigoted angry words to no one in particular.

In the end, there was an opening, at a different Hospital (Suny Downstate) I saw a doctor, he gave me a real test, gave me a prescription, listened to me, told me that AdHd is genetic, that members of my family likely has it. He allowed me to describe everything that was happening in my brain and in my body, which was a series of different sensations that were unknown to me before, deeply uncomfortable at times, my energy waxing and waning and for a first time seeing a new way of behaving. a quiet that I have never felt

I will have to try to dive into that at a later date. I will invariably forget. So another upheaval. Maybe one of my last few.. We shall see. My mother, my father and his wife and I are at odds right now. It is revelatory. I am starting to see clearly, with these drugs. There are a lot of things I didn’t see before. we brushed past so many things. I brush past everything. Its how i have learned to cope. I don’t want to lose all of that. Just some of it. The stuff that gets in the way. The stuff that makes me want to quit everything.

I wish that I were writing my story right now. THat’s the way it was supposed to work. I was supposed to be spending this time writing my novel or my film, but all i want to do is bake bread.

One of the issues I have with writing is that it takes so much time sitting down. I have so much bloody energy that I cant get myself to sit for long stretches. Jordan and I have been running around the track in my neighborhood. This track is something else. First, we take our dog there to play in the grassy area in the middle of the track. Some people in the neighborhood come too, with their dogs. The neatest features, and there are many, about the track are

a. It is surrounded by Suny Downstate Medical Center, Kings County Hospital Campus, Emergency Room, Psychiatric Institution, Chemical Dependency Intake Detox Center, at least two public high schools and a Yeshiva, but it is unclear if any of these institutions are affiliated and/or provide maintenance or management of it

b. The track features football goalposts and bleachers that are sat on by patients and visitors alike. The walls of the buildings behind the bleachers are painted in vibrant land and even spacescapes.

c. There’s an adjacent basketball court area that is being razed and rebuilt, plus bathrooms that are not functioning, chain link fences dividing handball courts, two big jungle gym areas plus my favorite part – an outdoor prison yard gym with ample equipment and a gas grill. The reason I mention the grill is because one time I saw two fellows on a motorized scooter trailing the gas grill by the guy in the back of the scooter holding on to the half-table with wheels contraption that attaches to the grill. It was a magnificent show of resourcefulness.

I want to take pictures of it but I am scared because its literally a prison gym. Its awesome and I love it but it is so hood- and I am so white. I kind of want to use the machines- but I am way too scared to step in there right now. maybe next summer. in any event jordan and I have been running around this track to burn of some of our cabin fever. it has resulted in EVEN MORE ENERGY than i had before which was a lot.

So it makes sitting down to write very challenging. Especially when the writing induces any sort of emotion because it makes me just want to get up and start walking around. This is the AdHD- WHICH by the way my shrink is a BEEEEYATCH and I’ll write another post about why.

I think the worst part about this virus is the self judgement. I got in an argument with my mother this morning because I feel like I’m constantly being baraged with other people’s productivity. THis has been going on for my whole life. Other people’s accomplishments are the bane of my existence.

This is what drove me away from instagram, this is what drove me from facebook- I feel like this is what has been driving my entire social identity crisis for the past 15 years. Your accomplishments.

Once I see your instagram page or facebook, i can’t possibly know the real you because I’m always thinking about the picture I saw that doesn’t blend well with the person who is in front of me. Every picture tells a million words that aren’t being said when I’m in your presence. Its like every person I meet I need to see their family photo albums or their garage slide show. I really don’t want to know how many more experiences you have had than I have, I don’t need all the pictures to make it that much more real.

I’m not intelligent enough to learn this as I go like an consciously objective observer. My brain collects data and uses it to reinforce negative thoughts and punish myself. This happense almost exclusively unless I identify it and try to stop it using tools that I invariably forget I have.

I am such an innately rebellious person that the moment everyone is working from home and being productive, I want to go out and find a job and take the subway.

I have a real social problem- thing is I know for certain there are others out there like me, I just haven’t really found enough of them to support and to be supported by. My mother raised me in such a binary environment that I am having a really hard time adjusting to this deeply grey life. makes me want to shut it all out draw a big x down the middle of the screen that is my life.

I’m not suicidal, I’m just very very grumpy.

I picture everyone home with their respective families. I’m now inching so very close to 45, and so almost everyone I know is home with their families, because they all have them, and they’re being quarantined together. Sounds fun, I guess it could be.

I wonder how I would feel if I were still a child. It would, of course, depend on how old I was. If I was a teenager it would be a nightmare. I hated my mother with such a passion. Now that I’m not a mother and so many of my ‘used to be’ friends are mothers I wonder if they’ll ever have to experience that. I’m sure every mother does.

Motherhood is a real tricky thing right now, even for those of us who are not mothers. We think about the time we would be spending now caring for a young person. Because that is what we as women normally do.

We are also taught to perform a job.

I have neither to worry about. No job, no kid, no husband, no mortgage. So what’s to worry about when you have none of those things? Well obviously you are supposed to worry about NOT having those things, right?

UGH. So fucking annoying. It’s just bullshit is what it is. All I do is waste time thinking about what other people are doing right now. Lounging, vacationing, off visiting some other property, in the woods in vermont with their families. Their parking spot and their car and their ez pass and ski caddy. WELL FUCK YOU RICH PEOPLE AIN NO SNOW ANYMO.

I shut down free bread in September of 2019. I have been trying to recover from that loss by going to therapy and writing about it here. I have taken a few contract jobs but I am not currently employed by any company, nor am I eligible for unemployment. I’m lucky to have a very small amount of cash in the bank, enough to cover rent for a few months. My current romantic partner has a job for now, so I can afford to live in safe shelter and be well fed. For now. I say this because everything is temporary.

All bets are off during COVID 19. But no bets have ever been on, for anyone. Ever.

I have quit so many things, lost friendships, gotten fired, dumped, cheated on. As a result, I don’t value and therefore don’t participate in home ownership, marriage or child rearing. I don’t have or want a gym membership, and I don’t particularly like eating at restaurants. I tried building a garden. I really liked that. but my landlord kicked us out right as our first growing season ended. Humanity intervenes. That one I’ll try again some day. But it seems like no matter what, the more you know about anything at all, the more of a shit show it all turns out to be. Gosh unless you’re Soooooooo lucky. There are some unicorns out there.

But I know myself. Unfortunately I NEVER learn from my mistakes. So that means I will without question go about my business of being heartbroken all the time. This is the curse of my personality. The only real problem now is what to get heartbroken about this time? Do I want to go back into the food business? Do I want to create something great or just mediocre? Do I want to learn how to code or try to teach myself a new skill or should I just spend this time baking?

I think everyone’s thinking some form of this or another, depending on their current encumbrances. Is that a word?

It’s interesting to think about how the different people in the different classes are spending their days. Those who are lucky enough to have internet – those who are lucky enough to not have to care for children – those who are lucky enough to be young and healthy- those who are lucky enough to be able to afford to not have to work.

So I’mma be straight with myself here on IQE. Because this is MY midlife crisis and I want to use it to learn about myself, the way I respond to circumstances, the way I behave and the actions I take to enhance my time here on this planet.

Like everyone else, I have deeply rooted belief systems that were built way back in my childhood. It has taken the loss of Free Bread to learn a lot of these things. I learn the most when I suffer great loss. Like I learned to quit smoking cigarettes!! Because suddenly there’s nothing there but memories and space. In any event I have one memory that stands out, one that always comes back, one that has haunted me for decades. It’s juicy, like a tomato being thrown against your forehead.

I had just started 6th grade at Edgewood Middle School and my class of 70-80 kids was, in the blink of a summer, suddenly 400. It couldn’t have been more than the second week into school when during lunch recess I was pantsed by my elementary school friend since we were 6 years old, Jill. Everyone saw, we were all outside in a contained area. People pointed and laughed because it was funny. And then I made a tiny foghorn to record the incident in detail and to sound loudly and clearly, for many decades to come, “YOU ARE NOT POPULAR.”

I like trying new things, always have, so I’ve done my share of drugs and I take a lot of risks. Ive blown through jobs, schools, industries and towns full of people. I just keep moving forward. That’s my problem. I can’t fucking stand still. I have a lot of trouble keeping friendships in the digital age, social media is very triggering for me and I think it’s because of that thing above. I’m unpopular. Sometimes I’m not sure why I don’t like something when it’s popular – is it because I don’t like popular things because popular things don’t like me or is it that I know myself really well and I most assuradely will not like it. I have good instincts most of the time. Doesn’t make me popular. In fact, usually it makes me more unpopular.

One of the things that I have recently learned is that I more than likely have AdHd. If you go down the list of steps of things that people with AdHd do and say and think, I can tick all of those boxes, and so suddenly a lot of things start to make much more sense. Like maybe if I had aDhD see I can’t even remember the D capitalization thing when I was a kid it would make sense that I was a weirdo to other kids which would make sense that they would want to pants me. Now whether or not I forgive jill for said pantsing is not the issue. The issue is that the fog horn is still loud and clear and horning its way all up in my business all the time. it says

You are not popular, so nothing you do will will catch on becuase people think you’re weird and don’t care about you.

-forghorn

you will fail because you’re not popular enough to be successful and successful people are popular and you are not popular and nobody cares.

-foghorn

So you can see why instagram and facebook was hard. Free Bread as a business did ok because it was a product, not me. Somehow the Product was sort of popular, but not popular enough to get an investor or a man to shoot his gold dipped weiner money load injection into it. And this shit mattters in CPG. So it’s all these lessons that we’re constantly being taught- the popular pretty girls are the successful girls. THe ones with the babies and the long straight hair. So many babies and popular girls with long straight hair.

I have always been a terrible drinker. Since my very first sip, barfs were inevitable and somehow never a deterrent. My mom would drink a glass of wine, my dad a glass of wine, but drinking was never a prominent factor my childhood, nor was smoking or drug use. This was during the Just-Say-No days, and my parents were for all intents and purposes healthy thinkers and doers, having been raised by relatively healthy thinkers and doers themselves. There was no turmoil in my household that was caused by substance abuse and for that I consider myself lucky.

The kids from my high school were very sophisticated and parties tended to feature marijuana over alcohol, but I still wanted to try before I got to college, because I knew that I would have to go to college. My best friend and I would raid the half jewish liquor cabinet in my house and the full jewish liquor cabinet in hers. I would pick something, plug my nose and take it down. Her dad sometimes quit smoking cigarettes and so I would try smoking and inevitably barf. Peppermint Schnapps with Coke, things like that. I remember we had Godiva Liquour.

I went to a private but decidedly not liberal arts midwestern college a few hours south of Chicago. My parents (my mother) made me go to college, and she made me go to that one. I am pretty sure she selected this particular school because my boyfriend at the time went to University of Illinois, which was an hour away by bus. I couldn’t have gotten into U of I if my life had depended on it, because my gpa couldn’t have been higher than 2.1– not that I remember specifics but I do know it reflected 4 years of daily theatricals, much suffering and subsequent rebellion. She full-on ignored any offensive I put out, so trained to parent me towards marriage, becoming a teacher like her, home ownership, and my own parenting. It was like a line on a running track. You may know there are other lines but those are reserved for the other people.

So after 18 bewildering years in a very upper class leafy Jewish suburb north of Chicago, I was placed in setting where people had straight and even blonde hair and blonde EYELASHES and American-made cars. Some had acne and some didn’t even know ANYONE at the ivy leagues and a lot of people were bi-ii-iig.

I had never met people who were farmy. It never occurred to me that there were Irish and Italian! I’m pretty sure these facts were lost of my mother too. These people had never heard of a matzoh. My mom, of course, ‘advised’ me (she did so much of this) to rush a sorority. It was the jewish one, but here at this University even the Jewish one wasn’t totally Jewish. Well, It was like half. Just like my home.

I learned about Catholic School and Kegs. I did beer bongs of Milwaukee’s Best. And I would barf and I would keep on going. SO what? This was so prevalent that when I would walk up the four flights of my dorm stairwell I would turn Right to the bathroom before turning Left to my room.

And this was really the beginning of my life. 1997 was my first year of internet service, my first email address (gr8ful1@camelot.bradley.edu) and first first dip into adulthood. Only later did I learn that I can’t tolerate beer because of my Celiac Disease, but what of it? It was barf and me, me and barf, from years 18-37.