You are also my brain: adventures in (in)(ter)dependent living

I’m at home right now and thinking, as I always do when I’m at home, about my brain.

I use the term “prosthetic brain parts” to refer to any way of externalizing a function which my brain is supposed to do but doesn’t. For example, organization. It’s hard for me to keep even really basic stuff organized, hence my flow chart for leaving the room. (I’m planning a sequel soon which will tell me how to go to bed, because when I stay up too late and get too tired it becomes very difficult for me to remember how to do that.) Other prosthetic brain parts include timers and alarms, which help remind me to transition between activities.

But people can also be prosthetic brain parts. This is the most crucial difference between home and college, and it’s why I’m finding (semi-) independent living at college so difficult. For example, here’s how my executive dysfunction affects my eating, at home and then at college:

At home, Dad generally yells “Come and get it!” after he has finished cooking dinner. This is the first cue which tells me I should get up and go into the kitchen. If I fail to respond to this, someone will call again: “Zoe! Dinner!” This is usually enough to get me to the table. If I am still stuck, all I have to do is hold my hand up and someone will help me to my feet. My girlfriend is visiting with us right now; if she sees that I am stuck, she will call out helpful instructions (“Put your feet on the floor. Now stand up.”).

At college, I don’t forget to eat, as such, but I do forget all the steps involved in getting food (as I forget the steps involved in most things). If I get stuck along the way, no one will come unstick me – I have to unstick myself. The anxiety and effort involved in keeping the steps straight and keeping myself on task can lead me to skip or delay a meal rather than make myself go out and get one. Or I might do dubious things like eat a “meal” of chips and candy from the vending machine. Or I might try to reduce the steps by eating at a restaurant or ordering food delivered, which gives my brain a break but strains my wallet.

Basically: at home there’s no chance of not eating the meal. No matter what happens, I will eat. At college, there is a chance that I will intend to eat and then fail. And just to add another dimension of difficulty to the situation, the possibility of failure and the uncertain outcome of my efforts heighten my anxiety. Remember, I’m already feeling anxiety because of forgetting the steps and having to unstick myself. The more anxiety I feel, the more difficult it is for me to perform advanced brain functions like unsticking myself, and thus the failure becomes cyclical.

There are a lot of scenarios that work out like this. At home, If I’ve been stuck in the bathroom, sitting in the sink not doing anything when I should be getting dressed, someone will knock on the door and ask me if I’m stuck. I can even ask someone to hang out in the bathroom while I’m brushing my teeth and putting on my clothes, in case I get stuck again. At school, I have to be the one to unstick myself. Following simple instructions is easy; unsticking myself is very hard.

At school, during periods of stress, I start to get a sense that I am jerking myself through my life by brute force alone. Every step feels deliberate and requires an intense effort. At home, I no longer have to act as my own drill sergeant just to put on a pair of shoes. I don’t have to watch myself so vigilantly, because other people are there who will help me out.

I feel as though I’m starting to repeat myself, but this is hard to explain, and I want to explain it perfectly. Home is easy. College is hard. This is why.

Now what do I do about it?

I am a limited resource and I don't know what to do about it

I’ve found a new way to be productive and it’s exhausting me.

I’m not sure if it’s more or less exhausting than the potent combination of guilt and anxiety produced by procrastination – probably it’s just a different kind of draining.

Today, after two hours cloistered in a library cubicle, working diligently on a late paper, I got stuck on the stairs to the ground floor. A girl passed me on the landing. She said something , and I couldn’t hear what. I had my headphones on, but with the cord yanked out, so I just heard muffled quiet, and felt pressure. The girl glanced back at me a few times. I remembered how to climb the stairs.

Outside of the library, I stood rocking on my heels, getting cold, blowing out clouds, stimming out on stars. It took me a while to gather the energy to walk to my dorm. I felt I’d hit some kind of wall. I thought, I have come to the end of my brain. In high school I had some arrogant idea that my brain was somehow infinite, and only my time was limited.

The moisture on the ground was turning into frost, creating a sparkling effect that first dazzled and then overwhelmed me.

I’m pretty sure I used the last of my spoons to get to my room, or perhaps the penultimate spoon. I have a backlog of German homework to do, but I can’t do it anymore, so now I’m calculating how early I have to get up this morning, how best to bury and wrap my alarm to keep my sleep-deprived self from simply shutting it off and giving up. I’m at that point where I’m so tired that the steps between me and sleep – taking things off the bed, turning off the light, setting and wrapping the clock – seem insurmountable.

So I’m not sleeping. I’m thinking about thinking, worrying about worrying, writing about writing.

In Which Everything Seems Pretty Awful

The fall semester has begun and my executive dysfunction is seriously bothering me.

I’m currently being screwed over by my lapse in planning during class registration last semester. At that point, I somehow thought that I could take only one history class in the fall. Upon arriving at school, I remembered that I actually need a major and perhaps I should check up on the major requirements, and I discovered that I’m seriously behind in terms of history coursework. Additionally, I kind of want an education correlate in case I decide to go into special education or a similar field.

This means that I’m scrambling to register for new classes, which takes up a lot of my time, and if I get into new classes I’ll be behind on the readings for those classes, and I’ll have to catch up, which will take up a lot more of my time.

I should have planned for this last semester. I should have known I would need more history classes. I should have signed up to get field work credit for the volunteer work I did over the summer. I shouldn’t be writing this post right now.

I’d forgotten how much work I do at college. I have to work to make myself work. This might sound frivolous and lazy, as though I just can’t muster up the willpower to overcome a hedonistic urge to enjoy myself when I should be working. In fact, if you were to check up on me while I’m attempting to make myself do work, you would find me in distress as I attempt to focus on a task but somehow always end up doing something else. The guilt and anxiety that this produces are problems in their own right, and the worse I feel the harder it is for me to focus. Can you spot a pattern here? If you picked “downward spiral,” you’re correct.

As I write this, I am looking at the pile of clothing that I have yet to fold and put away, the bags I haven’t unpacked, the bookshelf I haven’t assembled. As I write this, I should be doing my German exercises, or reading for my history class. Yet somehow I ended up writing this, almost without noticing that I was beginning to do something counterproductive.

Maybe in a few days things will be sorted out. Maybe I’ll find new classes. Maybe this semester won’t end with gloom and doom and late papers in every class and the academic apocalypse. Maybe I’ll learn to get things done on time. Maybe I’ll get more control of my life. Until then, I’ll be playing catch-up. Again.