quick

this will have to be quick, as i'm typing inbetween chores. the chicken is in the crock pot, but the cats are not yet fed, nor is their litter emptied.

it's the big three-oh on tuesday, but i think i'm just going to celebrate my 28th again. that was a good age. (;

last night my mental illness of choice came into focus so sharply that nasa should have been able to pick it up from space. "and here we have the great wall of china...and over here, kim's ADD..."

the whole issue was over where to go for dinner. dan wanted me to make a decision based on some options he had. i couldn't pick anything--because i honestly couldn't.

i wrote a poem later that likened my thought process to pouring water through a colander when you think you're using a funnel.

all of a sudden ALL the options are good. and all the options are bad. it's difficult for me to sift through and make a choice. dan suggested that i just pick something, some place. i know it frustrates him to no end that i didn't, and we had this fantastic fight about how annoying it is to the world around me that i can't make a decision.

at the same time, if i could, don't you think i would? i despise angering others.

thursday my mother called. she wanted to know what kind of cake to bake for my birthday. i was honest. i didn't know.

because here is how my through process went:

mmmmmmmmmmmm cake!!! i'm so excited to have cake that's made for me! should i have marble? or white? no not white, it's kind of tasteless...what about lemon with lemon filling? just heard dan say angelfood...with strawberries, delicious! but i'm not sure i'm in the mood for berries right now. or spice cake with some cream cheese frosting...no, carrot cake! so yummy! but no raisins in it...boy i sure do love chocolate cake, too...that cake we had for sara's bridal shower was so good, chocolate cake with chocolate frosting...

at this point i just grabbed something and said "marble...or chocolate cake, that's fine." to which my mother replied: "with what kind of frosting?"

*sigh*

it's not that i don't want to make quick decisions. my life would be easier if i did. it just takes me longer, because mentally i need to list out what my options are, and they get blurred and multiply like rabbits in my head, and pretty soon there's too many to count--they all are good, they all are bad. i can't prioritize which rabbit is the cutest, which is the furriest, which is the color brown...they're all rabbits.

all roads lead me to the same morass of thought: all cats are gray in the dark.

sometimes it reminds me of being at the nature center when i was a kid. they've got exhibits, they've got wild animals, they've got shows. and then they've got these boxes with dark fabric tops on them, and holes for your hands. you put your hands inside and feel:

a turtle shell
a bird foot
a leaf

you're supposed to quickly identify what the object is, and then lift up the flap next to the arm holes to see if you're correct. some things, when you reach inside, are obvious. others take time to decipher.

my problem is that i reach into that darkened box, and i feel around, and the objects are all there--scattered around in the box, a puzzle to be fitted together. i get distracted by each individual piece, so distracted that i forget that i am putting together a puzzle. in the end i give up--annoyed and angry at my self. i lift the flap and see the puzzle is only four pieces large--and then i get more annoyed because what seems like an easy answer, what seems like something a kindergartener should be able to solve--i could not solve it.

it's not that i don't want to be quicker at thinking. it's not that i don't want to be distracted. i hated that when i was a kid i was always the last one eating lunch, or at sleepovers, the last one eating breakfast. too many things were going on--i couldn' t focus on actually getting the spoon to my mouth at the same rate as my compatriots. i daydreamed in class--i think my third grade teacher said that i could be a very good student if i just applied myself.

it feels like after three decades, i'm still that child. that perhaps i should have better control of how i process the world. that i should put things together more quickly. intake is not the problem. i can keep up with what the world is tossing at me. sometimes i mentally move more quickly than my intake, which is the beauty of add. but for the most part it's just frustrating. your brain is moving so quickly, adding so many things onto your immediate options, that all you're accomplishing quickly is frustrating the person offering you options.

it seems awkward to think about picking up paper and pen when someone is optioning away, and writing down the options so that i can think of what i really want.

the same thing happens whenever i have to think quickly about what i want to do--the options become endless, and i just cop out and say, "i don't know," instead of taking the time to make my brain slow down and see the options. it sounds absolutely ridiculous: "can i call you back tomorrow and let you know what kind of cake i want?"

shouldn't i just KNOW right away what my favorite cake is?

perhaps. perhaps not. in the grocery store yesterday there were a hundred different options for barbeque sauce. they were all right there in front of me. it took me probably twice as long as dan would have liked to pick out one bottle for this morning's chicken. but with all the options in front of me, it was easier by far than standing in a different aisle, looking at cans of soup, and trying to think of what sauce to choose when i was in the right aisle.

i want to be as quick, making a decision. i don't want to leave even the minutae of my life up to the whims of others. but at the same time, i just don't know how, without imposing my limitations on them. i don't want to make dan wait for an hour while i puzzle out where i really want to go for dinner, or tell my mother that i'll get back to her later about a cake flavor.

it seems like i keep missing the gold by hundreths of a second. if i could find some way to creep up the podium from bronze, i would. it's just not a quick process for me.