It's been a pretty bad week. You know the ones when lots and lots of small things go wrong until everything is a complete mess?

I've been struggling with feeling like a huge burden on everyone in my life. I have ADHD, and while I try hard to manage it, there are times where I slip up. I don't mean to, and it almost physically hurts when somebody thinks I've been intentionally careless. Every day is a combination of managing my symptoms, while trying to meet a set of standards designed for people who don't have a brain like mine. I can't take stimulant meds because I have an irregular heartbeat so I have to work extra hard just to maintain a semblance of normalcy. It's intensely lonely sometimes.

On top of that, these migraines have been plaguing me. My neuro said they can be very random, and essentially something messes with my nervous system with some of the attacks. I'm sitting here wondering where all the weird symptoms end, because it seems like a new one joins the rest every week. If I'm honest, I feel like I've been left somewhat in the dark with these "episodes". This morning, I woke up, was feeling pretty rested, then, when I raised my head from the pillow, the world spun. I slowly sat up and my whole left side just felt like it wasn't holding me up and I tipped sideways. I couldn't stop myself from doing so. It was like being on a boat. Tears just ran down my face out of nowhere, and while I was perfectly calm in the moment, my body was weak and shaky. It wore off after about 20 mins, and left me with a mild overall dizziness/head pressure which is still here now. If I bend and straighten up too quickly, it brings on the dizziness again. They did mention my cervical spine is all kinds of messed up, so I guess it's gotten a bit worse.

That's the thing though, I just have that sort of tired acceptance that stuff is falling apart, and then sudden flashes of anger that nothing is really being done to help me. But there's nowhere to direct that anger, because I'm relying on a broken system (NHS) to help with a very rare type of migraine, and a neck that's essentially got the structural integrity of silly putty, and a possible autoimmune problem that they haven't had the time to test fully for. So that anger turns inwards, at myself, the person who "always seems to be sick", and who constantly lets people down, with the added layer of ADHD to really drive home the reputation of being an oversensitive, flaky person who thinks of nobody but herself. That couldn't be further from the truth. Everything I do is to make sure I'm mindful of other people, and I overcompensate in every way to show them that I care.

All of this stuff going on is putting SO much pressure on Mr Raptor (I like that name, so that his name from now on haha). He was exhausted today having had very little sleep, and he tried desperately to stay awake and make sure I was ok after I'd lost my balance. I lied and said I was better than I was so he would go and catch up on some much needed rest. I'm sitting here now, wishing I could wave a magic wand and be fixed, just so he had less stress. But magic wands don't exist, so I pretend that I'm ok. I downplay everything.

I have a pile of housework to get through, work to catch up on, and I have to somehow find the energy to travel overseas and visit family. Family who doesn't really believe that ADHD is real, and that I just need to toughen up, and that because I'm relatively young, my health issues are clearly nothing serious and just a way of getting out of boring tasks.

My Mum gets fixated on the idea of me being back home, and how amazing it will be, but only as the super shiny, successful, happy version of me that I have to plaster on just to survive the encounter. Everything is about image with them. The moment we have a real conversation, she almost seems disgusted when I voice any real concerns in my life. So I have to sit there and look like everything is roses, pretend my entire spine doesn't hurt, that my hand and foot isn't numb, that I struggle every single day to make sure I'm keeping up. In reality, every single part of me wants to run out of the house screaming.

Dramatic much?