Getting off the Ferris Wheel

For months now it has felt like my thoughts have been going around and around in circles. Day after day, doing the same thing, going no where. I hit my crash point a few weeks back. Miserable, depressed, sitting around feeling sorry for myself, sulking, I felt like I was grieving something without really knowing what. I reached the point of breaking, I walked out on my partner, left the run down, falling apart house, left the car just about to run out of rego and needed serious repair to keep it on the road, I left all of it and just started walking. I walked an entire day and found a motel to stay in.

My partner persuaded me to return, but the despair remained, my thoughts even turning suicidal. To understand this, let me tell you a bit about myself. At the age of 19 I was diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). Easily distracted, poor memory, poor co-ordination, poor social skills, low self-esteem, I still somehow managed to finish high school and managed to get a Hospitality Certificate, spending a few years going from job to job.

Eventually though it got harder for me to get a job and I didn't seem able to hold down a job for any real length of time. This situation abruptly became worst when I was 28 and was diagnosed with MWS (Muckle-Well Syndrome), an auto-inflammatory condition I have inherited from my Dad. A condition shared by my sister, my brother, a niece and nephew, we all got diagnosed about the same time, none of us knowing what was wrong with us until this point. My job prospects went from slim to none. ADD combined with MWS with a dodgy job record....

So for the last six years now I have been on and off welfare, picking up a couple jobs which didn't last. I have a done some courses which hasn't helped me at all. I am actually not sure what sort of job centerlink, or MyGov as it now seems to called, expects me to be able to do. Even on medication my condition slowly worsens over time, I experience quite a bit of joint point and discomfort, I can not work in air-conditioning, I can not work outside where temperatures can vary quiet a bit over the coarse of a day and I can not work in Hospitalty anymore. Not only is it painful for me to be on my feet for long periods of time but think about how many temperatures I am exposed to. You can go to a hot kitchen into a freezer and back into a hot kitchen in a matter of seconds. You are exposed to heat from the expresso machine, heat from food warmers, cold getting drinks etc from the fridge. If you work alfresco, you are going inside to outside all the time which is generally at least a five degree difference and most places also have air-con.

Working in winter? You can forget it. MWS makes me more susceptible to cold than most people and with increasing joint pain, I find it hard enough to get out of bed on a cold day. What sort of Employer wants to hire an employee who can not work 3 to 4 months of the year, every single bloody year, normally wakes up at least one day in every month barely able to function, and also wants to take three days off every single month so I can attend specialist appointments? Yeah, good luck with that.

Medication or not, as far as work goes, I am out of options and yet I still have to apply for work and because I have a Hospitality background, I keep been pushed to apply for jobs I can no longer do. Getting Disability is a nightmare and amongst everything else, somehow I am expected to be able to afford to get to and attend medical appointments on welfare (Are you kidding me?). I live in rural, country NSW, getting to specialists in Sydney once a month or so..... yeah right!

Anyway, that is only part of the problem. What more do you ask? Well I am extremely frustrated with my parents, with my entire family actually. You see I got rather mad at my mother when after crashing her car, she spent $50,000 dollars on a new car. Here I was struggling on welfare, paying nearly $200 a week on rent and living in a place too remote to access medical care easily and she splurged on a new car.

Both of my parents are retired now and while they are busy playing lawn bowls, being secretary at the local orchid club, taking caravan trips around the country, babysitting grandkids, taking boat cruises, taking overseas trips, sailing on my Dad's small boat and taking holidays from their well-earned retirement, they have left all three of their children to struggle on with life. See I'm not the only one with MWS and my niece not only has this condition, she also has Tourettes syndrome. My sister is struggling to pay off a mortgage and working part time and has MWS as well. My brother has thankfully paid off his mortgage but he also has MWS, as does his youngest son, and is struggling away in a crappy teaching job. Females, in case you were wondering, tend to suffer far more with MWS more than males, and I honestly have no idea how my sister manages, because I know she suffers badly from joint pain as well. She is however an engineer and far smarter than me. The double impact of ADD and MWS on my life I suspect is unappreciated by my family.

Getting mad at my mum did however get me something from my parents. A loan of $80,000 that I would have to pay back, at 5 percent interest, and a gift of $20,000. That's right, my parents are making money from their welfare dependent daughter. I have lost count the amount of people who are absolutely horrified and disgusted that parents could do this to their child. My partner considers them to be the worst parents he has ever met. It did give me to opportunity to buy property, a run down, falling apart house in the middle of bloody nowhere. I have no idea what they expected me to be able to buy but here I have to admit I have made a mistake. I bought a house with concrete walls. I can do nothing to it without knocking to whole stupid thing down and re-building it. Something I have no hope of ever getting enough money to do with how things stand at the moment. I am pretty sure the foundations are stuffed and with the cracks developing in the walls, I fear for the house's long term future. Paying $90,000 has really only bought me a block of land with a half decent shed and a derelict building that's in the middle of nowhere, paying off a loan instead of rent.

So yeah, my life kind of sucks at the moment and what makes it worst is that I don't really see much of a future. My life going from day to day, going around and around in circles, going no where. In the last couple days, however, I came across a book about ADHD. I was disappointed to learn that most of what was in that book has since been discredited but a bit of research did link the importance of exercise in improving brain function. Not just any exercise, but something like jogging, rigorous enough to get the heart pumping. I also found an app that it suppose to help with ADHD.

I am incredible unfit but I do go for walks fairly often so in the last couple days I made a point of jogging at least some of it. I am actually a little surprised at how unfit I actually am. I didn't last long before I was out of breath and the legs started to hurt. I haven't wanted to push myself too hard to start with, so I started walking to warm up a little, jog so as long as I could, walk a little further, then jog again when I felt ready. Walk, jog, walk, jog, by going this way I feel I can slowly build myself up without pushing to hard to soon.

The impact on just my mood even in just a couple days has been astounding. At least I am not sitting around feeling sorry for myself anymore. I am unsure if it is the ADHD app or the jogging but my thoughts seem clearer and calmer as well. So here I am, trying to make small changes in my life, trying to get off the ferris wheel and I am writing a journal of my progress.

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