Dysfunction Like an Adult

Hello, world!

-or something to that effect. So Home Base has a blurb about the point of this blog, but I decided that my first post will be a more in depth explanation. I’ve spent my life grappling my disorder. I’ve spent my adult life grappling with not having it together. I have spent years in therapy and years on medication. I have tried to build habits, make good choices, and do right by myself and others.

I consistently do not accomplish my goals in this fight with myself to adult. It has been a point of distress for me that even when I try, I seem to fail. I am very mopey, yes. One day in therapy my therapist – a wonderfully abrasive man – asked me what my idea of success was. Before I could answer he rather strongly added, “Success that includes your happiness.” I don’t know what the fuck I thought success was prior to that moment (can I swear? This is MY blog, right? I think I can swear), but it did not include my happiness.

A magical light bulb I didn’t know existed lit up. I answered with things that I had never said before: living alone, being aromantic, having a job where I work my own hours or I work regular hours but they’re at night, living somewhere where being a night owl is something I can do practically, etc. These are all things I had never brought up before. I have had such an all-or-nothing view of success, firmly rooted as an abstract concept that’s unachievable, that it’s no wonder I always feel like a failure. My success, on the other hand, does not have to be so rigid. Despite my all-or-nothing take on myself, I quite enjoy the subjectivity of life and people. It’s what makes my time spent on Earth wonderful.

Part of feeling like a failure when it came to success was really, really not being great at cookie cutter standards of adulting. Since success can be my success, can’t being functional, too? My version of adulting is not cookie cutter. I am dysfunctional in many senses of the word. I am working every day to be functionally dysfunctional. I am scheming how to dysfunction like an adult. Adulting is hard, success is hard, the idea of functionality seems impossible. So, it’s time to work toward my happiness and dysfunction like an adult.