Choices
Hello everyone!
First and foremost, my name is Mary. Thanks for stopping by to read the first post (blog post? Story? Whatever you wanna call it) on my Medium page. I’ve been sitting on ideas for a blog for a while, mostly because I don’t have a journal and I tend to overshare on Twitter. So why not move my oversharing onto another platform, where y’all can choose to read my weird musings?
Of course, because I am the way I am, Twitter will always be the Oversharing Platform of Choice. But you never know, I may really get into saving all my weird thoughts for Medium…
Anyways, I thought long and hard about what my first post would be about. I love pretty much all forms of media consumption, whether it be movies, video games, music, whatever. From time to time, I’ll post a review of whatever I’m obsessed with at the moment, or whatever I was obsessed with forever ago and am now finding time to write about. I, however, didn’t want to just jump into that right away. I like to take my time when it comes to thinking about how I feel about any certain thing. It didn’t always used to be like that, though.
When I was growing up, I was kind of an asshole. I don’t know why my parents didn’t throw me to the wolves after age 5. My attitude was AWFUL. I hated doing what people told me to do, and I’d lose my temper pretty fuckin’ fast. One specific memory I have of me flying off the handle is when my sister left her chapstick in her pocket and ruined my favorite article of clothing. Now that I’m trying to tell the story, I can’t even remember what the fit was, I just remember the emotion. I got so irrationally upset, I hit her wayyyyy too hard. If both my parents weren’t standing there, I probably would’ve kept hitting her. Whenever I think of that memory, I feel so awful. My sister and I get along really well, and we did then, but sometimes I would lose my shit! I think she knows that I feel bad about how I treated her growing up, and I still try to make up for the times I lost my shit and took it out on her.
Everything was So Much All The Time, to the point that I would just break down and freak out. I wouldn’t say I chose to stop being hard to handle, but I did realize once I graduated high school and started studying Psychology and Education at Capital U that something wasn’t quite right with how I approached life.
I forget exactly when, but during that one and only college year, my dad was diagnosed with adult onset ADHD. He told me “You should probably go see the doctor and see if you have it too.” I thought about it for a few days, wondering if ADHD was the reason I reacted in such a harsh way to everything. In my head, it didn’t make sense. Why would lacking the ability to pay attention make me mad all the time?
Eventually I went to my doctor and he told me I had ADHD. So, as soon as I got my prescription from the pharmacy, I went back to my dorm and looked up all the symptoms and anything that could be comorbid with it. I don’t like to be That Guy and say WebMD knows everything, because it definitely doesn’t. I did learn a lot about myself thanks to WebMD, the doc, and Wikipedia, though…While looking up comorbid mental disorders, anxiety and depression were at the top of the list when it came to ADHD. And then it clicked.
Most of the symptoms for ADHD (inability to focus, restlessness, poor planning, mood swings, etc.) and depression really lined up with the way my life had been so far. I think that if I hadn’t listened to my dad I probably would still be a college dropout, but I wouldn’t be as well adjusted as I am now. I know that 90% of what I do or say makes no sense still, but at least the line from Point A to Point B is a little bit clearer to me than before.
But, this post is about choices. How did I get lost in my background so hard as to deviate from the point of the post? Well, I didn’t…this is all set up for this paragraph! Sort of. The point of the matter is, I chose to go to the doctor, and I chose to actually listen for once. I dropped out of college because I knew I wouldn’t be able to handle it any longer, with or without the Rx. I chose to stay in my childhood home (for the most part; my dad got remarried and moved out, but I could have easily gone somewhere else) and move in my best friend, which was great, but now that I look back, we should’ve gotten a new place together. Choosing to stay in Leland for so long really didn’t do me any favors.
And that’s okay! It’s okay to make mistakes and choose the wrong thing! I know I’ve made plenty of mistakes throughout my life, and I’m only 25. Mistakes are what make us grow. If I hadn’t gone back to one of my exes, for example, I would’ve never been able to realize that I deserved something more, and I probably wouldn’t’ve messaged my now husband back on the dating site I was three seconds away from deleting off my phone.
Every day, I choose to take a moment and figure out what the heck is going on for the day. And every day, I make lil mini choices that really could change the course of my life. I have plenty of examples, like choosing to walk away from a potential fight at my now job because of a fight I took head-on at my old job and subsequently got fired for (although I was right and he admitted it after all was said and done, one should never argue with the GM about onion peeling).
Being medicated really does help with the whole decision making process, if I’m being honest. I don’t think 18 year old, unmedicated Mary could ever get her ducks in a row like 25 year old medicated Mary can. And my ducks are kinda all over the place still! They’re in the same room at least, but they’re still kinda just…walkin’ around. And that’s okay.
I truly believe that everyone can figure it out, whether it be what you’re having for breakfast or whether or not to get the treatment for your mental disorders. And if it’s hard to do it alone, there are ALWAYS people in your corner. Even if it doesn’t feel like it! There’s people on the internet that will root for you when no one else will…trust me, there’s lots of great people out there and in your circle, you just have to find them!
So, that’s all I have. Choices are what shape and make us, us. As someone who absolutely hates making decisions, I will say that it’s absolutely necessary to do so in order to get to where you want to be, whether it’s a simple choice or a harder one. Ya girl can’t eat pancakes everyday, so I begrudgingly eat eggs and toast sometimes. And ya girl can’t be fuckin’ rude and wild all the time, so I choose to take the steps I need to take in order to function in a way that, on the surface, appears ‘normal’. We all know I’m not normal, but that’s not what we’re talkin’ about right now.
Choices are hard to make, but you have to make them! It’s part of life. Probably the most important part, if I had to pinpoint one. So, choose to do something great while you’re here on Earth, like plant a tree or buy someone’s meal at a restaurant. Or, if anything, choose to make it to tomorrow. If nothing else, we deserve to see how it all ends, right? :P
Alright, that’s it, bye. Hopefully my musings made sense…and hopefully I can post something on here once a week! If you don’t already, go follow me on Twitter (@merrinator). Next time, I’ll write about music, because I have a great idea for a post that I think y’all will like. Maybe by then I’ll have a cute lil tagline to end things with, but for now, I’ll just say see ya next time!
