{"id":8706,"date":"2014-09-11T00:17:21","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T16:17:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/blog\/?p=8706"},"modified":"2014-09-11T00:17:21","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T16:17:21","slug":"0156-when-hitler-stole-pink-rabbit-adhd","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/visakanv.com\/1000\/0156-when-hitler-stole-pink-rabbit-adhd\/","title":{"rendered":"0156 \u2013 When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit + ADHD"},"content":{"rendered":"

When I was a young boy- I\u2019m not sure if I was in primary school or secondary school, I read a book called When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I want to write all my thoughts about it without first looking up the book on the Internet. The book was about a young girl and her family who were I think half-Jewish or less, and they ran away from Germany to run away from the Nazis. I still haven\u2019t read Anne Frank. The girl had to leave her pink rabbit behind, which was the source of the title. Still memorable as heck. I\u2019d love to see the book get republished with an elegantly designed cover of a man in a Nazi uniform with a pink rabbit in his hands.<\/p>\n

This book has stuck in my mind for some reason even though I haven\u2019t read it in years. I thought about how it was the story of a life. This little girl who had grown up and made something of herself. She had to relearn everything, learn a new language, cope with stress and difficulty. It wasn\u2019t incredibly hostile if I remember, just sort of strange and tangential to all the serious, horrible tragedy that was happening in Nazi Germany itself. I find myself thinking about Jeannette Walls\u2019 The Glass Castle<\/a>, and about Tetsuko Kuroyanagi\u2019s Totto-Chan<\/a>, and how in both cases we see the world through the eyes of a child as an adult remembers it.<\/p>\n

We all grow old if we\u2019re lucky, we all die.<\/p>\n

We have this limited LifeGame of 80 years (again, if we\u2019re lucky. It might always end tomorrow). And we have to make the most of it. We don\u2019t HAVE to, but it\u2019s pretty clear that we OUGHT to. I can\u2019t sleep properly at night knowing that I\u2019m wasting my days. A well-spent day brings well-deserved sleep, and a well-lived life brings well-deserved death. (Death is but another adventure, something something said Dumbledore.) I don\u2019t want to die as anxious as I\u2019ve sometimes gone to bed. Though of course I suspect that when you ARE about to die, you won\u2019t care anymore. It\u2019ll be like booking into camp. [1]<\/p>\n

One of the things about ADHD is that it means being very blind to time<\/a>. Autistic people have trouble making sense of metaphors and sarcasm, they have trouble seeing people as people. (Something like that, I don\u2019t know the details.) I read something similar about schizophrenic people having difficulty recognising themselves. They get into their bed, and they smell themselves, but they don\u2019t realise that it\u2019s their own smell.<\/a> So they feel like there\u2019s been a stranger in their bed, and it makes them anxious and paranoid. They can\u2019t get comfortable with themselves. And they\u2019ll probably need some sort of prosthetic\/tool to figure that out.<\/p>\n

So just like how some people with memory problems don\u2019t recognise somebody they just met 30 minutes ago, I don\u2019t notice the passage of time. I really don\u2019t. I\u2019m sorry. I REALLY DON\u2019T. And I don\u2019t realise that deadlines have consequences. I don\u2019t feel anything. Other people have told me that they feel weird when deadlines approach and things are not done. Alarm bells go off in their heads. For me, it\u2019s more like a really slight buzz in the faraway distance. I don\u2019t notice things that aren\u2019t right in front of my face. I don\u2019t notice things that I\u2019m not paying attention to. It\u2019s very hard to interrupt me when I\u2019m really caught up in something.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m terribly short-sighted when it comes to time. I just don\u2019t perceive it the way everybody else does. This is why I can spend countless hours doing things that other people get tired of. And this is why I\u2019m always late for things. It\u2019s not that I\u2019m a selfish person who doesn\u2019t care. I can\u2019t \u201cnot-care\u201d about something that doesn\u2019t even enter my radar in the first place. You wouldn\u2019t called an amnesiac selfish for forgetting your name, would you?<\/p>\n

Reality doesn’t give a shit<\/strong><\/p>\n

But I understand that I live in a world where people take these things personally. And this means that I\u2019ll sometimes not be able to build relationships with some people, because some people need others to be around them, to keep them in their thoughts, to do nice things for them, etc. I sometimes think that I\u2019d like to do things like that, but I can\u2019t keep things in my thoughts. My thoughts go wherever the hell they like. There\u2019s a part of the brain that most people have that regulates these things, and mine is underdeveloped. ADHD is an inability to internally self-regulate. That\u2019s why I think cigarettes were so awesome for me. They felt like some sort of stable pattern\/structure\/routine that I could contextualise things around.<\/p>\n

In a broader, longer-term sense, it\u2019s helpful for me to read these memoirs. I think I need to read more memoirs to get more context. I need to find more minds like my own. David Ogilvy was one. I need to read Voltaire, I need to read Benjamin Franklin, I need to read Ford. I need to go straight to the source and drink it up. This isn\u2019t about impressing people. This is about survival. This is about strengthening myself so that I can help my Wolves. I used to approach this as a sort of indulgent exercise, or as a sort of\u2026 chore. I needed to read all these great things to be impressive. But I don\u2019t even want to be impressive anymore. I just want to cope. I just want to do what is best for my Wolves while I have them. That\u2019s all. The opinions of others, while interesting and amusing, are a lower priority.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t put off my daily writing.<\/strong> I can\u2019t write after some period of time, because what happens is that I just don\u2019t write, and then I get anxious and cranky and it sucks for me, it sucks for my Wolves and it sucks for everybody around me. So I can\u2019t do that. I need strong, daily structures that keep me running. I need to exercise every single day. Like, not for fun or pleasure or because I want to be fit and muscular and sexy or anything like that. I need to exercise so that I can hold on to my Wolves. I need to do it for them.<\/p>\n

This is an ADHD mind, motherfuckers. I grew up in a world that told me it wasn\u2019t good enough. I\u2019m going to show you what it can do. I\u2019m going to show you what my Wolves can do. They\u2019re far greater than anything that I\u2019ve seen out there, really. Maybe I\u2019m wrong about that. But I\u2019m going to find out.<\/p>\n

Notes:<\/strong><\/p>\n

[1] When I used to be in NS, I used to agonise about how I was wasting my time on the weekends before I had to book into camp. I didn\u2019t do enough, read enough, write enough, play enough, hang out with friends enough. Yet when I booked into camp, once I was on the bus towards the ferry, a strange calm would come over me. I\u2019d done all that I could\u2019ve done, nothing else could be done, I\u2019d just relax and move on. I feel like death will probably be just like that. What an amazing privilege.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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