Losing My Mind (And Finding It Again), Part 1

Different ways I considered to start this post:

“I’ve been called scatterbrained. Funny thing is, they were right.”

“Do I owe you an e-mail or a call? Sorry, that happens a lot with me.”

“I’m on a drug, it’s called Charlie Sheen…”

—-

There’s no easy way to start talking about losing your mind. I’ve already deleted and started over several times, scared what people will think of me for sharing this. But it’s felt like a big dark secret holding me back, and it’s possible others are going through the same struggle, so I’m going to tell my story.

*deep breath & imagining all of you in your underwear to reduce my anxiety*

—-

I love to sleep. When I sleep, everything is quiet. Getting to sleep, however, is always more of a struggle. Because even if the room is completely quiet, it sounds like a busy New York street in my head.

When I was younger, thoughts in my head were rapid and clear. I was bored in school because I picked up the subject quickly and was ready to move on long before everyone else. When working on a project, my mind was always focused one or two steps ahead of what I was doing.

High school and college were periods of time when I both loved and hated my brain. I was proud of being smart, of being able to pull answers to obscure questions from my grey matter in split seconds. It also didn’t make me popular – when a question was asked in class, it was nearly impossible for me to not raise my hand, as my brain was screaming at me I KNOW THE ANSWER! SAY IT! SAY IT! SAY IT!

But I also started to notice that it never stopped. My thoughts raced from dawn to well into the night, and if I went to sleep exhausted, it was mental exhaustion, not physical. I hated working on long projects or reading long books, because I was distracted long before it was finished. I was also a champion procrastinator, preferring the rush of cramming it all in at the last minute. I never thought it was a problem, just a side effect of having a good brain. I had youth on my side and used that youthful energy to battle the negative aspects and keep my brain in line.

As I’ve grown older, the speed at which I think is still the same, but I’ve slowly grown more and more unable to deal with it. After all, it never stops. Never.

The best way to describe it is to imagine being in a room with 8 televisions and 2 radios on. They’re all loud, and all feature things you are thinking about. The songs compete for your attention, and as soon as you’re interested in something on one television, another one becomes even louder and drowns it out.

I hate having a brilliant thought for a post in my head, and just as I start to ponder how to develop it, another thought cuts in and suddenly I can’t remember the first one at all. Gone, just like that. Sure, it happens to all of us at some point, but I’m grasping at stray thoughts all day long, trying desperately to give my attention to the thoughts that are important, thoughts I can’t risk forgetting.

My memory is actually pretty good, when it makes enough of an impression for me to remember. If I’m eating lunch while distracted, though? I wouldn’t even be able to recall what I ate later that day. And at night, my thoughts keep going even when I want to stop. Moments of the day replay, random thoughts make quick drive-by passes just to perk my mind and keep it alert, and of course a song is always stuck in my head.

What I hate the most, though, is letting people down. Forgetting to send an e-mail to someone to check on them. Being unable to have a long talk with a friend who is hurting – looking them in the eyes while fighting internally to keep my thoughts on what they’re saying when my mind tries desperately to wander. (And I DO care! I want to listen! My mind is just bringing up random thoughts and there’s a bird in the tree behind you that is really pretty.)

Throughout my twenties, I visited my doctor several times for symptoms that I thought were depression: I was tired all the time, I had trouble falling asleep, I had no attention towards my work, I felt fuzzy-headed and down. Each time I was treated for depression, despite everything going well in my life at the time. The meds helped me cope, but did little to help stop my racing mind.

After becoming a mom, my coping abilities failed as my responsibilities increased. If I only had to take care of myself, I could get by, but adding kids to the mix quadrupled the number of things I had to keep track of and guaranteed that something was always forgotten. And, to add to the cacophony inside my head, I now had bone-chilling anxiety screaming what if? at me as well.

A year and a half ago, I went back to my doctor. I was exhausted, I was fuzzy-headed, and I felt like I was losing my mind. I nearly broke down in tears as I told my doctor about locking our door at night, telling myself that I locked it, going upstairs to bed, and then being completely unable to remember if I’d locked the door or not, requiring me to go check again. I explained how my mind was a jumble, and it was getting harder and harder to think through an entire thought without losing it somewhere along the way.

I was convinced I had Alzheimer’s or early onset dementia, and I was scared. My thoughts were clear and speedy when I was younger, why were they failing me now? Was this the beginning of a slow slide into forgetting everything?

That office visit went far longer than I expected. My doctor looked back through my history, and we discussed practically everything I’ve written here and so much more. Blood tests were run to check practically everything that could be checked, and they were all amazingly normal.

And then my doctor asked, “Have you ever thought you could have attention-deficit disorder?”

Really?

Part two coming very soon, I promise. 

(Edited to add: Part 2 is now available.)