Mostly lovely little period here, ~18:00 Sunday til 19:00 Monday [today], son visited & stayed over. Lots of hugs & cuddles [he's taller than me & sadly i'm not short; also since his interest in weightlifting & bodybuilding over the last couple of years he's a bloody strapping man-mountain now, but i'm not letting that stop me from numerous free-range huggles!]. Lots of chats, fed him lots, whisky might have been had, several movies streamed & chatted about. Solved most of the world's problems. I love him so much. 💜

But the heavy stuff, we also got into the heavy stuff, & it always breaks my heart. He's a lost soul, drifting rudderless, burning up with #anxiety & #depression about it, & feeling powerless to find a way.

{{{background to the heavy stuff}}}

• He's unambiguously very intelligent, & was going great guns thru primary school, early & mid high school, but before the HSC the wheels fell off [but neither he nor we (ie, parents)] knew what was happening, what to do]. He did survive the HSC, with a result rather below his abilities, but considering what emerged later was a bloody good effort. He was super excited to go to Uni, but more wheels fell off & kept falling off. He struggled hard, sank, dropped out, stayed in his head for long months, tried again with a different undergraduate degree, ditto repeat, tried for the third & final time, but then sadly knew this was not to be his path [& i knew too, & energetically supported him & tried to buck him up that Uni is not for everyone & that's perfectly ok, no adverse character reflection of him at all, & we'll find another way for him to thrive & be happy]. He's had two relationships, sadly both ended, pain happened. He's been working for the past few years in the kitchen of a food shop & doing very well, being popular with workmates, management, customers... given more & more opportunities, easily grew into them. He knew it was not a permanent thing for him, but it was something, & he could do it.
• Anyway, a few years ago he took himself to a good psychiatrist, + psychologist, & was referred to an #ADHD specialist, who finally gave him insight as to what has been strangling him internally since mid high school. As i understand it his is the inattentive strain, not the hyperactive strain, & today as we had our latest discussion of all this, he explained his frustration with the very name ADHD which considering his personal arc feels a bad misnomer. He instead thinks of it as an executive function failure problem. It burns him up with frustration, depression & pervading hopelessness... as he told me thru tears today, he finds it so awful that he desperately struggles to do "ordinary" things [& feels alone in that no Vanillas seemingly understand it]... "simple" things like planning anything, often even remembering to do things, very frequently elude him. He said he has no sense [& never has since primary school] of "the future" for him, as even just getting thru each day is so hard for him.
• I love him so much, & burn with sadness that my beautiful big boy [man] carries this immense weight.

I mentioned the fediverse to him, & that many of my friends & acquaintances here in Straya & also around the rock, are self-described as having their own direct personal life-arcs with ADHD &/or #Autism, & asking if he might be willing to join in here for the opportunity to chew the fat with a lot of lovely peeps who will not only not judge him, but exchange comparable "battle scars" & just be generally beautifully communal, as i readily observe here all the time. I really hope he might decide to try it... but i also recognise the irony that to mull it over is subject to the very same internal dynamic which has characterised most of his life... he'll take it around & around & around in his head, & struggle to achieve an escape velocity.

I wish i could magic it all away from my darling boy 💔😭