I wasn't kidding yesterday

About the ADD.

Seems like my whole life has been the same struggle. 
Never finish anything.
Afraid to begin new things because of the interruptions. I can concentrate, I do have Passions, but always there's the dilemma of getting interested in something but being unable to work through them because there's dinner to cook, or laundry to do, or somebody demanding something and so on and so on. 

I think that the people who tell you that you "have to have a passion" are essentially Full Of Shit. The people who tell  you to "Apply Yourself" are the very same people who stop you from actually doing it. In this way, I envy those whose brains are wired in such a way as to ignore them. Or, perhaps are unable to. But such people are shunned, medicated, "helped".

Also, they are in some kind of agony.

I'm not quite that crazy. 
I care what people think of me.
I dislike getting in trouble, being told off. Anger and censure.
I can be bullied, pushed around, shamed.
I can "act Normal".

Up to a point. 

I aim to please. 
I'd like to be approved of.
I want recognition.

And then the strain of it gets me down and I despair, I give up, I get drunk, I play loud music,  I call in sick.

It's all so self-defeating..

And then I look at the people who've Managed, who Got The Degree, who Got The Job, who Succeeded (somehow) and I despair.

"Can you feel/ the birds start heading south/ Can you sing when your heart is in your mouth/ Can you drink wine from a paper cup/ And can you give these last attachments up"
 (Cathy Chamberlain, Debbie's Song)

I once had a brother-in-law who was the child of his father's second family. He revealed to me that he was "vaguely" aware that there was another family. He didn't know much about them and he didn't know what became of them, but he was raised with plenty, he got a good education, he "worked hard", he "succeeded", he got a good job and had a house in the "Burbs" and a nice pension and all those things, and he didn't think about them, and he didn't know them.
Well, I'm a "First Family" child, and what's more, I'm the eldest of all of them, and worse, I'm female.

No inheritance for me.
No "looking up" to She-Who-Came-First-And-Set-An-Example.
I'm the one who grew up in poverty. Mold. Second-hand clothes. Free lunches. Babysitting the other kids because Mother had to go to work at the Nursing Home and the local shop.
No after-school activities, no "Volunteer, join clubs-'cause -it-looks-good-on-your-resume".

So I've grown up with Brother got sent to private school, because "Well, he's a boy and he'll have a family to support", and Step Sister got a room to herself and a playroom to herself and private school and a rich Granny and "You have to be nice to her because her Daddy died" and watching the half-sisters get a private school education and a "good" husband and all that...while my own failures got put down to "lack of initiative" or "You didn't succeed because you didn't apply yourself."

And. If that weren't bad enough, they pile on top of it, "You mustn't be Bitter."

So, here I am, sneaking up on 60; two failed marriages, no degree, no career, no nuthin to show for myself, and my depressions are just a Failure Of Character.

Well. 

Some days it's more than I can cope with, that's all.