Frustration

Sometimes I feel like I'm making headway against all of these invisible illnesses... and sometimes I feel extremely defeated by them.

Today is one of the days I feel so defeated. 

In the past, I was able to juggle so many parts of my life - mother, daughter, volunteer, employee, pet owner, photographer, musician... I could go on and on. The vast majority of the time I could keep all of this in the air and didn't miss a beat.

Of course, there were the occasional missteps - forgetting about an appointment, being late to an event because I went the wrong way, getting behind on cleaning or grocery shopping - but overall, I felt I had a handle on life.

This ability to handle so much was still the norm even with a few invisible illnesses. For example, I've been dealing with major depression and anxiety as long as I can remember. Both would get in the way at times but usually I was able to keep functioning in spite of them.

But as I've gotten older, more conditions have piled on. Some I think I've had for years but weren't diagnosed until recently. Some are new. What's especially fun about this is as I get older, those undiagnosed conditions get worse and new ones continue to show up.

Sometimes I wonder if it's the treatments that are making me worse - like the many medications I take for all these conditions. Sometimes I wonder if it's all due to age. I also wonder if it's the mentality - when I didn't know I had a certain condition, I think I could deny the symptoms more than having it diagnosed. 

What happened today could happen to anyone. I keep telling myself that to hopefully make myself feel better. It's not working.

It was a simple mistake. I bought two new pairs of glasses for different specialized functions and I got them from different companies. One company messed them up and I had to return them.

This is where the problem lay... I have been so scattered and overwhelmed with trying to keep those balls in the air lately that I dropped one - and returned the working pair instead of the bad pair. 

Since I rarely use these glasses, I didn't notice until it was too late and there was no way to retrieve the ones I sent by mistake. 

I'm beating myself up for not checking closer, for not slowing down for tasks like that so I don't mess them up. 

And, like I said, this could have happened to anyone. Accidents happen. People make mistakes all the time.  I'm human and invisible illnesses or not, I won't do everything just right.

I console myself that at least I don't rely on these glasses. I can live without them. I might even be able to get another pair pretty cheaply to replace them (though they won't be the quality these were). 

But what worries me is how much I'm forgetting lately. I'm so much more scattered and ADHD-like (haven't been diagnosed but it's highly suspected) the past few years. It's so difficult to focus and complete one task without another infringing on it, and sometimes I don't make it back to the first task.

I'm concerned I'll miss a deadline at work, or that I'll miss an appointment with a client, or that I'll make a major mistake like not managing my parents' meds properly. 

It's scary - and I don't know what to do about it. I make list after list. I try to stay organized. I work to keep the stuff that tries to overcome my space contained.

It's like I'm driving at 90mph and I know that there could be a speed trap coming up but I no matter what I do, I can't slow down. 

How the h*ll do I put on the brakes when there are times it's seems I've forgotten where the break pedal is?


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