Monday, February 9, 2009

Paging Dr. Jekyll...

I feel split in two.
I walk hand in hand with this chemical burning away in my brain, and when I do I am Captain Sunshine. The inevitable hero - victory at hand and underfoot. I am the eternal optimist, the unning man who knows no surrender. I am your sunken winter sun shedding just enough light over the plains to set the sky on fire. I am a mind open to all, absorbing information wherever it can be found. I am a learning machine. I am Dr. Jekyll woking tirelessly to fill the empty spaces in my mind, to fix the faults I carry with me.

And when this chemical leaves me I am the quintessential pessimist. I am Count Craptastic. I am the cynic nitpicking everycorner of my own existence. I am a mind turned inward, criticizing every empty space Dr. Jekyll has been working to fill. I am Mr. Hyde, working to dismantle hope. I am a monster breeding. I am your lurking lunar nightmare. Eclipse. Backwards. I am a complete lack of energy and hope - lonely, miserable, unhappy because I can't function. I can't take what the universe gives me and turn it into something positive because I don't know how.
I speak, of course, of Adderall. I have ADD, which you likely know if you know me. I have found that there is a definite line between who I am with this help and who I am without, and I feel it is imperative to stitch the tear between these two halves.

So, yeah - I have always had a little resentment towards the fact that I can't function like others can without medication. And today, I am Captain Sunshine again, and that tear doesn't seem to bother me because I'm riding on the side that I like, the side that lays open like a book waiting for the world to smear its ink across my pages.

There is, however, one regret that pesters me no matter who I seem to be.

I cannot seem to be inspired and create at the same time anymore - at least, not how I used to be. Perhaps a lack of a definite source of sorrow bars my creative side. The words are there, the notes, the brushstrokes, what have you - whether I am writing or playing, it seems that I can't interpret and create at the same time. I don't know if this even makes sense, but - it is a very rare occasion as of late for me to be able to take what I am seeing and stylize it into something better - I can't look out my window and turn what I see into words. I can't read music on a page and make it my own - or, to be honest, I can do these things, but they take an immense amount of energy and I am unsure as to why. Maybe I'm just readapting to this balance.

Perhaps it is a process of relearning. I don't know. Maybe I just have to learn how to stitch myself together again.

3 comments:

TBD said...

Oh, the infinite joys of being on the fringes of normal mental functioning! I share your frustration. While this 'disorder' (for lack of a better term) does tend to give you a whoop-ass helping of creativity, it's about as ephemeral as a good day on the stock market lately. Kinda like trying to catch a butterfly on speed.

Amanda Walsh said...

you'll get back into the swing of things, once you do you'll probably look smug and say something along the lines of 'see, just like riding a bike'

then i'll fibb and say you've said that like 8 times, and you'll be all confused and we'll be back to norm. lolz.

AndreuDareen said...

I feel you.