Looking east.

I've always had a hard time talking to people, about what I really feel.  I find it hard to organize my thoughts, I'm easily distracted, I wander off on tangents, and if I'm interrupted, I completely forget what I'm talking about.  It's hard.  Add to that the fear, the fear of offending someone, the fear of rejection, the fear of conflict, it's all just hard and usually something I avoid.  

When I was kid I was always told, don't feel like that.  That's what I remember most about growing up, don't feel like that, because what I felt was wrong apparently.  I didn't fit into my family, I felt too much, said too much, I was too much generally.  So many don'ts.

And now I'm sixty-two and I feel less and less that I am too much.  I have ADHD.  I do feel things strongly, I am sensitive, I have a hard time with criticism, I am terrified of rejection, and I have very strong feelings about right and wrong and underdogs.  Being a nurse thickened my skin, taught me to not take everything personally, turned me into an excellent advocate for my patients, and taught me social skills (like listening) that I so desperately needed to learn.

I have ADHD and knowing that helps but I still have an awful time expressing myself verballing.  It takes time for me to organize my thoughts.  I get distracted and overwhelmed during difficult conversations.  I cry, a lot, so I avoid difficult conversations, conversations that need to be had.  I helps to know this about myself, to know that I need to write things out, to get them out of my head, to organize them.

Looking northwest.

My husband is a good man, but he is also an angry man.  He too has a hard time talking about things and I'm sure he's been told many things over the course of his lifetime that have shaped how he feels about himself and his place in the world.  But, we need to figure out how to talk to each other, we need to feel safe with each other.  I can't speak to him that way he speaks to me, he dominates conversations, there is a power imbalance and I end up frustrated; often I just shut down and walk away.  When he believes he is right, he can't hear another side, can't put himself in the shoes of another, can't be wrong.  But things often look so differently if you just turn around and look at things from a different direction.

On the weekend he was rude to my daughter when she woke up.  He said good morning but she wasn't paying attention and didn't hear him or respond, so then he said good afternoon to her and she was offended.  It was 9:30 in the morning, not late, and she felt like she was being criticized for sleeping later on her day off.  She also has MS and is so fucking tired all the time that it makes life hard for her.  He told me it was a joke, but if you're the only one who thinks it's funny, it's not a joke.  When I brought it up later he repeated that it was just a joke and when I mentioned that she feels very sensitive about her MS fatigue he brought up his uncle who had MS, so he knows about MS.  Neither of us "knows" about MS because we have not lived with MS.  Just like people don't know what it's like to raise a disabled child, unless they have raised a disabled a child.  He couldn't accept that somebody saw things differently than he did, couldn't put himself in another's shoes.  I gave up.  I give up a lot lately and just turn away and put another brick in the wall.

He'll be upset by this post, airing our dirty laundry, but I need to get this off my chest.  Life is hard and I want it to get better.