My brain is not your brain.

I burn the rice, almost every time. We have this cool powder for taking burns out of pans. Otherwise we would have no pans.

It looks like this.

Rice goes in with a little oil.
Mix, mix, wait because you know that you'll need to add the water in just a few seconds.
Lean against counter, see a sweatshirt on the floor.
Go over to pick up sweatshirt and put in closet.
When in closet notice the coats thrown on the floor.
Get annoyed and hang them all up.
Find a hat that doesn't belong there.
Take hat upstairs.
Hear the smoke alarm go off.
Have no idea why the alarm would be going off.
Run downstairs, see stove.
Oh, you were making rice?
Damn.
You burned the pot.

I've started to skip the oil step and just add water directly so if I forget at least the pot stands a chance.

I sat down at my computer to do something a few minutes ago. I don't even remember what that something was but I've done twelve other somethings and still can't remember.

After Eli was born I was diagnosed with ADHD and OCD and high anxiety disorder. I imagine I used alcohol as one coping mechanism and now I don't have that any more. Things feel stirred up again and it is intense. (I should add I am grateful for those labels because they gave me tools for understanding myself.)

I can't figure out what course to put out next even though I'm about to have no income. Brains like mine thrive on the next thing and the high of an idea they are obsessed with and I've been trying to calm my life down, take things slow, meditate and exercise. I'm floating away and my brain has no idea how to produce in the float.

Just like learning to cook rice differently (my family says I should set a timer but my brain hasn't remembered to set the timer) I am learning new ways to work, to create, to plan, to vision life.

Perimenopause and being sober seem to have triggered things back up. So has watching one of the kids who I've long suspected has ADHD struggle in school and relationships the way I did in middle school and ADHD was not readily diagnosed in girls then.

The classic age for it to present for girls was 7th grade (now it is 6th) when social pressures became strong and rather than one primary teacher you move around to classes all day. From my reading, the failing grades and school struggles were thought to be the social engagement, the crushes on boys and friend dramas.

Not the brain.

She is now diagnosed and getting help and it makes me wonder why I've decided that I can manage everything myself without help for so long.

I imagine much of my addictive personality is linked to managing a restless daydreaming swirling brain. I am in true awe of people who are linear, even within the span of an hour. 

The whole point of writing this, because I still have no idea why I sat down at the computer, is to say that healing, just like my brain, is not linear.

We figure one piece out and it leads us to the next bit and that bit takes us around and underneath another layer and that layer reveals that past and the past shows us our future and our future tells us about our now.

We swirl.

Sabotage is simply a return to what we know until the newness becomes as familiar. I have said I am addicted to change, constantly swinging from one thing to the next, but maybe I was addicted to the return to familiar.

Safety after the high of the experience. Somewhere to be held in the exhaustion.

I am trying a new plan while making rice. I don't put the wooden spoon down until the pot is filled with water and turned to low. If I go chasing a sweatshirt, I find the wooden spoon in my hand and it reminds me of where I started.

So far, perfect rice.