Real Talk: What Do I Get When I Die?

Can someone please tell me what I will get someday when I make it to heaven and inform God that ‘Hey, I did it without ADHD medication AND antidepressants bitch!’ What’s my prize? Will I get a special seat in heaven? I need someone to please let me know what I will get when I die. The God I believe in I imagine just looking back at me with sad eyes, truly disheartened that I would ever live so deluded into thinking that that’s what He wants from me.

Let’s first start with what it looks like down here. Enough talk about what the big man upstairs is thinking. What it looks like down here is I’ve lost a tendon in my hand this past summer. Silly me thinking it was safe to operate basic kitchenry early in the morning without taking my ADHD medication. What else? Most people don’t know this, but I’ve been in many a car accidents. I’ve caused them all. I’ve destroyed two rental cars in maybe a month period. Both my fault. ON MEDICATION. I think the second time was ahhh I was trying to get to some mango while driving. Did you know that I had my first kiss after I graduated high school? Did you know that until I started taking antidepressants at age 19, I lived my entire life debilitatingly ill? Debilitated. I’d start jobs and truly fear that I would vomit in the workplace. I’d go days without being able to touch really any food at all. Most of my life I would go completely mute in social situations, and I had no control over this. My body was debilitated. If I was not with the couple people that I knew I was safe with, I basically would spend the entire event gearing up to run to the toilet.

I understand most of you are probably quite surprised reading this. I’ve hide this very well. Hiding any evidence of this whatsoever has been a full-time job that I actually managed very well. I’ve spent countless hours, days, of my life in therapy. Hours in my journal just trying to maintain some ground…

My point here is not that I should just take the pills and accept the cure. My point is that I am working in overdrive regardless. I don’t get to take 25mg of Mydayis (Adderall) and coast through my day. I am still massively struggling. I’m meditating daily, I’m running, I’m making changes in my diet, I’m reciting mantras every time I get in the car… and on a good day I’m not a danger on the road. I get to experience joy and love and feel a moment of wow there’s more to this life than just unrelenting struggle. Most days I’m able to overlook the looks I get when I take a long time ordering at the coffee shop, visibly struggling, and the shame that that brings up. Most days if you’ve got a good combination of meds and movement and life’s going great, I’ll feel connected and maybe, at least temporarily, distracted from that baseline fear that things might soon spiral out of control, and I won’t be able to cope with that.

That’s my life. Disabled. Debilitated. Trying to make it work. This isn’t those cute limiting beliefs some of y’all go to ‘healing circles’ to work through. This is some I’m too debilitated to even get out of bed and go meditate and take the supplements that are supposed to help me shit.

Back to my point. I won’t take this on anymore as my purpose here. To struggle through life even more than I already do and will. To spend MORE of my time and energy TRYING TO REACH some degree of stabilization. That’s not what I’m here to do. I’m here to love, I’m here to relax and be in communion with others. I’m here to experience joy and wonder and play. I’m here to feel and be connected to the world around me, not increase the barriers to such, so as to walk around wearing a medal that nobody actually gives a fuck about besides me and my meek asf ego.

I’m done. Give me the pill, give me the help, give me the disability accommodations, give me it all. I surrender. I’m done. This shit’s no longer on me. ENOUGH of it will always, already, be, indefinitely.

I’m wanting to end saying I am speaking from my personal experience only. Take from this what you will. But if this resonates with you at all, I really challenge you to ask yourself if your purpose here is truly to struggle?

It is NOT mine. And I assure you it’s not looking like we’re getting a damn thing besides severed hands, wrecked cars (I put a baby in an ambulance), and lost time. Lost days, lost relationships, lost life.