an extended meditation on presence (we also have chickens)
One common feature/bug of ADHD is "time blindness," or the inability to accurately gauge time. I describe it like this:
"My mind only recognizes two times: Now and Not-Now. Not-Now does not exist."
The nonexistence of Not-Now explains why I have trouble planning (the goal doesn't exist, since it's Not-Now), keeping track of deadlines (they occur Not-Now), and not overcommitting myself (everything I promise to do is Not-Now). In a sense, ADHD forces us to live in the present - the "Now" that is the only time that exists.
Or so I thought. Since the March 2021 motorcycle accident that killed my husband and upended my life, I've been stuck in another horrible present: The constant present of grief.
Intellectually, I understand that it's been four and a half years. I can remember things I have done between The Accident and Now. But I have to think about it. I have to remind myself that yes, those things occurred in a time span *between* The Accident and Now.
Instinctively, emotionally, fundamentally, time stopped for me. I live perpetually at the moment on March 24, 2021 when I woke up from surgery, looked at the date written on the whiteboard in my ICU room, and thought: "My entire marriage is past tense."
In January this year, I started my quest to yeet Big Tech from my life. That morphed into a quest to get chickens, to garden the heck out of every square inch of my yard, and (currently) to take a more active role in making my money work for me (hence my recent pondering of credit cards being weird and canceling services I don't use). I'd thought about writing a book: "The Year of Yeeting Big Tech" or somesuch.
The more I thought about that book, however, the more I realized that this journey didn't begin when I decided to abandon Gmail. It began with that thought, the only clear thing in the mire of anesthesia and pain meds and physical agony and grief: "My entire marriage is past tense. I have to be here for me now, because no one else will."
I trust myself to learn more about my money because I spent the winter holidays in 2024 re-teaching myself basic arithmetic to combat dyscalculia and years of bad math education. I spent most of 2024 renovating my house after spending most of 2023 on a massive KonMari-esque cleanout of stuff and 2022 renovating the basement. In 2023 I agreed to be the five hour a week band program assistant at the local school district, where Husband taught and where I'd been coaching colorguard and teaching marching band for several years already. In 2024 I took on running their high school library as well.
The entire process is connected by a conjoined theme of presence and absence. It's in the (physical) absence yet constant (in my mind and heart) presence of Husband that I've moved, tackling first my physical living space and then the mental and emotional space of working with the kids. I've lived permanently stuck at Day One Since Husband's Death even as I've rebuilt a life through four-plus years without him.
I don't have a sense of time anymore; I often feel as though the world has moved on without me. I live, emotionally, in an awful present that is forever severed from the me I used to be.
Yet I've "moved on" too, in a way. I'm not sitting around pining a la Victorian widow; I've changed careers, updated my house, gotten new friends and loves and hobbies and pets, gone on adventures. And as I've rebuilt that life, my instinct has always been toward *presence.* I work with the kids because those relationships require and reward presence. ("Love shows up," as Jess at Diary of a Mom puts it.) I got chickens so I could hang out in the backyard with them in the evenings and just *be present.*
There are endless self-help books that offer to teach people to "live in the present." They all seek to free us from the anxiety of living too much in the future and the regret of living too much in the past. I respect that as far as it goes - in fact, I think the main reason I rarely experience anxiety anymore (after a lifetime of "anxiety disorder" levels of it) is that I'm stuck in this perma-present of grief. I have to take things as they come. I really don't know what time is anymore.
I can't advocate for this particular approach to being stuck in the present. Don't get hit by an SUV, folks. It cured my anxiety, but the price was 2 damn high.
I lost everything the day that crash occurred. Yet presence - and absence, which are inseparable - continues to take prominence in my life and my decision making. Hence the blog title change. If this blog has one unifying theme, this is it. This blog is always my presence; always my view from the present.
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