My Own Words

This is something that I have been meaning to do for a while, something in the format that Everhate and ThatsFairZack did last year, and that is to talk about myself right before RPG Limit Break.

You may know me as WanderingMind, DarkHeroMind, TheWanderingMind, or any other variants.  I suffer from Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), depression, and anxiety.  I phrase it this way rather than to say that I have those disorders because it is something I live with every day rather something over which I express ownership.  These are words that I learned to use through the group therapy sessions I attended that were organized through NAMI.

It started sometime in the middle of last year.  I was sitting in my apartment watching RPG Limit Break, back when I was working and living in Minneapolis.  I wish I could have made it there.  I was supposed to run Tales of Xillia co-op along with Ghoul02, osey889, PXTfD, and Freddeh.  But with the way things worked out, I was stuck where I was.  But something happened.  Listening to people talk about their own struggles with mental health and hearing about the efforts that NAMI were making to spread awareness and provide services for other people made me want to figure out my own mental health.

In the weeks that followed, I looked up resources for what to do about my mental health.  Three things happened.

First was that I finally started to see a therapist in the area.  It was one of the few things that would help keep me sane during that time last year.

Second was I learned the extent of my anxiety and my depression.  I was never quite aware of how it affected me until last year.  I only knew about my ADD up to that point.

Attention Deficit Disorder, or ADD as it is often abbreviated, is a condition with which I am all too familiar.  I was diagnosed with it at a young age.  Let me tell you that it is a serious condition that not enough people seem to take seriously.  Or so I see from my own personal experience.  It isn't just a matter of pulling yourself together.  The way that my own brain functions makes tasks related to paying attention or even staying on task that much more difficult than it is for many people.  Sometimes I hear the whooshing noise of details flying past me when I think I am keeping track of everything.  Maybe it's how I need people to repeat things that may be obvious, but I know I'll blank out on some detail.  From time to time, I will be out the door and in my car driving somewhere when I only realize 20 minutes later that I forgot something like my wallet.  I sometimes play it off for comedic purposes, but this is a thing that happens.

I wish I was not writing everything while I have been without my ADD medication for the last 24 days.  For those of you who do not know, I have been fighting against my health insurance to regain access to my meds.  I had been on my current medication for the last few months when my insurance decided to request prior authorization forms.  Probably because they don't like the idea of paying for expensive medication that I need to function as a human being.  Unfortunately they have made it abhorrently difficult for me to actually take the steps to get access to my meds.  I will not go into details, but that is the situation.

I feel bad if I may seem out of it or I may act in certain ways while I am at RPG Limit Break.  Maybe I worry for my own good.  Some of you already have been around me long enough to know that I'm a lot better than what I can say about myself.  I just wish that I was on my ADD medication.

Medication is so important for those of us who really need it to function.  I have had people ask me, why don't you consider going off the medication.  I would tell them that it is a very dangerous act to do.  And what I have been going through the last three weeks are very much the consequence of me being unable to take my ADD medication.

What I want you as a reader to understand is that I am not useless without the medication.  I have to put more effort than I normally would to focus, to pay attention to everything around me, to be able to carry out the tasks that I need to get done.  Putting in more effort than I normally needed to do is taking a toll on me mentally, physically, and emotionally.  There are times lately when my mind would get so overloaded that I am unable to get anything done and all I think about is how I could dunk my entire face- no my entire head into cold water because I think that would be the only thing to bring me down to ground level.

ADD is very much a learning disability.  You know what I said about it taking more effort than usual to focus on things?  It's why I will ask for reasonable accommodations at the next major place that I work.  Because I have gone through higher education, all the way up to getting a Master's degree and then a graduate certificate in another field, I have a lot going for me.  I try to strive for the best.  For me, that's working in museum collections, which is not an easy field to break into.  It is just like how I would request reasonable accommodations back when I took standardized tests in high school.  That I needed the extended time to be on a level playing field with other people.  It is frustrating when my own disorders get in the way for which I strive.

Medication does not entirely solve the problem, but it makes dealing with ADD that much more bearable.

It's the same reason that I also take medication for my depression and seek help for my anxiety.

Depression and anxiety are two things that I am still learning about.  I have only known the full extend of how both conditions affect me in my every day life.  I know that there are days when I will wake up immediately feeling depressed and I have to spend the rest of my morning fending it off.  Then there are times where my anxiety will rear its ugly end and cause me to have an episode, only to leave myself apologizing once it goes away.

No one should ever have to feel berated for being open about their struggles with depression and anxiety.  Perpetuating the stigma of mental health only makes things worse for people like me.  I know when I did my internship in the middle of nowhere in Montana two summers ago, I felt the stigma all around me.  I had my former boss ask me every day if I was feeling depressed, as if I should have to feel that way on certain days, as if it was something that could go away.  Being in the middle of nowhere like that felt like I was in exile, which made my anxiety worse when it did kick in.  Being comfortable with telling other people about my depression and anxiety means that they are much better able to support me when I get into that state.

I can bring up an example here.  The excitement of RPG Limit Break being so soon can be too much to handle for me, that it actually brought out my anxiety.  I mentioned this to some people last night and they suggested that I try listening to some relaxing game music.  I'm actually doing that right now as I speak by the way.  I also was reminded that I did pack ahead of time, something that I forgot.

My depression has often caused me to be much harder on myself than I ever should be and then I have no sense of when to stop.  I'll get criticism for things, and rightfully so in cases, and I'll take it so personally that I may shut myself down mentally.  And then it takes another person to snap me out of it.  I am trying to catch myself to keep me from going down that path, but it's a challenge.

The third thing that happened last year was that I attended group sessions organized through NAMI, which was provided completely free.  Every week, I would meet in a church that lended out the room for our group, where the sessions would last an hour and a half.  I got to talk and relate my experiences with mental health with other people of my age range.  The group was very much led by the participants, with the head of the group there to oversee everyone.  I learned to phrase my mental conditions as something I deal with rather than something over which I express ownership.  Every week we would contribute topics to talk about and everyone would get a chance at participating.  Through these sessions, I started to come to terms with my own mental health.

The three conditions conditions I struggle with, Attention Deficit Disorder, depression, and anxiety, are something like personal demons that can never go away.  I can't ever express ownership over them, but things that live within me.  And it can very much be a constant and daily struggle to keep them from getting the better of me.  Knowing how I can live with these things can go a long way toward making life, you know, worth living.

Being able to deal with these things has made a lot of things possible.  Remember what I said about my internship in Montana about 2 years ago, where it felt like I was living in exile?  That was where I really began speedrunning, where I spent an entire month learning and coming up with a route for Valkyria Chronicles 2, my main speedgame.  Shortly after I returned home to Florida later that year, I did my first run.  From there to this very day, I have been constantly routing and speedrunning VC2 with no signs of stopping.  I have looked into other speedgames such as Tales of Xillia, Valkyria Chronicles 1, Hyper Princess Pitch, and Faxanadu.  There are still other games I want to look into.  I know that I want to start work on a segmented run of VC2 when I return from RPG Limit Break.

Who is to say that someone who suffers from these things possibly can't do the things I said here?

I have since lost my job in Minnesota, moved back to Florida, and looking to find long term work, but you know what?  I am still here.  That is something, right?

If you have read this far, these were words that I was meaning to write down for the longest time.

I am so glad to be able to make it to RPG Limit Break this year.  Tomorrow, I will be on my way.  Hope to see you all there, who can make it.  And for those watching from home, I can just say greetings from Salt Lake City.

These have been my own words.

Thank you.

Devon "WanderingMind" Rudolph