| Awolnation – Sail Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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Addendum: For what it's worth, I think I'm past the darkest point in my struggle to rule my own life. I still have to say almost daily to some person or another something like, ‘Eh, you're gonna have to repeat all of that because I stopped listening about 90 seconds ago. Sorry.’. As for the rest of my life, I'm working on finding ways to get wrangle it into a respectable one, and I think I'm having some success. The reason this song affected me so emotionally is that I am taking what I think will be a defining step in my life in terms of getting myself organized, being responsible, and attending to others properly. This song reminded me of how terrible it is to be caught up in the weaknesses of my own mind, and reminded me of how badly I hope that my current ventures will work out. Finally, the designation of ‘ADHD’ isn't so much an excuse or an illness to me as a way for me to learn about my own mind, in hopes of better understanding it, and better relating it to others. |
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| Awolnation – Sail Lyrics | 14 years ago |
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[This territory has already been covered fairly well, but only in posts buried within two or three reply strata, and never in this much detail. Regardless, check out StarBar's interpretation and especially the replies beneath it.] As someone who has been diagnosed with ADHD, I identify strongly with this song. I spent about 25 minutes listening to it on repeat in my car and crying today. This may seem like a surprising reaction, because to anyone who hasn't had to deal with it, ‘blame it on my ADD’ may seem like a joke. It's not. Let me explain why this song breaks my heart. ADHD is a condition that can put a huge strain on relationships. I've had many conversations with friends, girlfriends, and family members trying to explain to them that a failure of mine to remember something important to them, or to follow through on some promise was not a personal insult to them. It's nigh impossible to explain to someone that merely ‘trying harder’ isn't enough for you to get your shit in order, and it's harder still to do give such an explanation without sounding like you're excusing yourself. The hardest part of coping with my ADHD, besides my more private personal failures, has been trying to convince loved ones that I do in fact love and respect them. Nothing hurts more than the accusation that you don't care, that you're not trying, that you don't respect someone you love and admire. The clincher is that when such accusations are thrown in your face, the accuser is hurting themselves, and it takes a person of immense character to listen sincerely to any explanation of your behavior or motivations when they are in pain even as they listen. The next hardest thing, for me, about dealing with ADHD has been its effect on my identity. When you've got your Ph.D. psychologist and your M.D. psychiatrist, both of whom you know have your best interest at heart, telling you with the force of all their qualifications that you and the world are better off when you are in an altered state, the entire notion of ‘sobriety’ shatters. All of a sudden, I'm being told about scientific studies that show me I'm less likely to kill people on the road when I'm under the influence of a drug that makes me feel like someone other than myself. I remember one of the saddest moments I ever had was when my then-girlfriend told me that she liked me better when I was medicated. I know that she didn't mean it as such, but it felt like a flat rejection of the essential ‘me’. I will always remember that. The most regrettable feature of myself is that I tend toward wasted potential. I've been told I was smart ever since I was a little kid. I've always tested extraordinarily well, and when I've had interesting and substantive coursework, I've performed well in school. But my record, in school and at work, is marred by an ocean's worth of tardiness, misplaced work, forgotten dates, and unfulfilled promises. I've had to take the long way around in my life many times. I feel like I could be ruling the world by now, if only I didn't always seem to come up ‘a day late and a dollar short’, as they say. This too, is difficult to explain to people. I've sometimes felt like my performance can be decided as accurately by a coin toss as it can by the difficulty of my task. Because ADHD symptoms are all self-reported, most diagnoses and sometimes even the designation itself are held to be unreliable and possibly bogus. ADHD isn't something I can just tell someone about without being prepared to get into a long discussion about personal responsibility, psychological research methods, psychiatric treatment, and identity. These existential difficulties inspired by the diagnosis and medical treatment of ADHD (and many other maladaptive mental conditions) conspire along with repeated failures to induce one to ask the question of suicide. At my worst, I have absolutely felt like a ‘different breed’, and the contemplation of suicide is a natural response to that. Sometimes I feel like the world was just built for a different type of human; the things I am good at are not the things the world wants, and the things the world demands are not the things I am good at. I can't be a good person if I don't keep my promises. I can't be a good friend if I can't support myself in long enough spurts to support others in turn. I can't do either of those things if I keep forgetting and losing and failing. Feeling utterly doomed not because of what I've done, who I'm with, or what has happened to me, but rather because of the (apparent) fact that who I am is fundamentally broken is the most hopeless I've ever been. And the task of understanding seems too much for those who don't struggle with the same things. So we give up. We surrender to a terse explanation that sounds like an excuse; we trivialize, we summarize: just blame it on my ADD, baby. Whatever the fuck that means. Then inadequate as we and our excuses may be, we move on – we blow away. Sail. It seems strange to me to be as confident as I am about the significance of a song whose lyrics are so few, and at first appear so vague. But knowing what it is to ‘live with ADHD’, I can hardly imagine this song meaning anything else. |
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