Alyssa's Brain

I generally do my best to keep anonymity in anything I write on the internet, but I feel like my specific concerts are relatively safe to express here.

My mom has severe ADD. My brother and sister have also been officially diagnosed, and both my doctor and therapist think it is highly likely that I have ADHD. However, my brother, sister, and I have been generally able to cope with our attention issues over the years.

I know a lot of people think that ADD is a “fake” disorder made up to give people an excuse for having issues with concentration. I really wish these people could see first hand that it is quite real. My mom’s “symptoms” are essentially textbook signs of severe ADD, and she has every single one of them. She has a great deal of trouble focusing on anything for long periods of time, regardless of how important it is. She often forgets about the plans she makes, how much money she has, and where she places her possessions, again regardless of importance.

Earlier today, I called her because I wanted to talk to her about something. She didn’t answer her phone, so I figured she was busy at church and moved on. However, a few hours later, I got a call from her phone. It was a person at a church near her friends house saying that someone found her phone on the side of the road and turned it in. He said it had appeared to have been run over, but it was still working. Of course, my first thought was: “How on Earth does her phone get lost on the side of the road, at a church she doesn’t go to?”
It was a complete mystery to me, but I was glad someone was kind enough to turn her phone in, rather than steal it. Of course, I immediately did what I could to try to contact her. I emailed her with the phone number of the person that called me, I sent her facebook and skype messages, all with no reply. I then decided to call my brother and sister, and we decided that we would try to call her friend that lives near where her phone was found, again to no reply. We couldn’t really think of anything else to do to try to contact her but just wait.

My mom finally ended up contacting me about an hour or so ago, saying that she was aware of the phone situation and called the people that found it. I was glad to hear she knew what was going on, because without that kind person that called me, I doubt she would have figured out what had happened. When I ask what she thought happened, this was her word for word reply: “Must have left it on top of the car somewhere and it eventually fell off and got run over. They said the screen is smashed!”

What baffles me is that she is not this careless on purpose. She does not do these things because she feels like her possessions are disposable. She fully intends to keep track of everything she is doing at once without these situations happening, and right now she is failing. Her situation has gotten so serious that she can barely keep track of the simplest things, and it worries the living crap out of me. Most of that worry stems from me knowing that she is too selfless to think that she needs to take care of her own problems.

These problems don’t just involve her being careless and forgetting her possessions somewhere. She has serious problems with doing things in a timely and focused manner, and it has even bled into her job situation. Her boss has recently asked her to seek psychological help. It looks like she has, but I feel like the primary reason for her doing so is because she doesn’t want to lose her job, not because she feels like she should seek help. These problems have also interfered with her relationships with her friends and family. She needs to know that I am concerned for her, but she also needs to know that I am expressing concern because I love her and care for her, not because I feel she is flawed. My brother and sister feel the same, and both agree that it needs to be addressed. Hopefully we can do something that will help her get herself back on track, because it’s painful for me to see, and I know it doesn’t make my brother or sister feel very great either.

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There are quite a few lessons I’ve learned about keeping friendships alive during my college career so far. The most prominent of those being:

1) Don’t forget about your friends when you’re in a relationship. It’s not so fun to be the abandoned friend that’s only a friend when the relationship has gone sour. Divide your time between your new beau and your friends, otherwise when your relationship ends, you will end up alone because the friends you thought you had left you for people that want to be with them through everything, rather than being just a fallback.

2) Good friendships are not one-sided. A true friendship involves the both of you making plans with each other, telling each other stories, and being there for each other in hard times. The key words in that sentence are clearly “each other,” because once that part of the friendship is gone, it’s not really a friendship any more. Being the friend that’s putting in all the work almost feels worse than not being in the friendship at all. In fact, beyond a certain point, it IS worse. It’s heartbreaking to become the only contributor in a friendship that once was what you considered the best friendship you ever had.

3) Friends deserve at least the same amount of respect you have for yourself, if not more. A person you consider a friend is a person whose well-being is just as important to you as your own. If your friend is feeling down, do our best to be there for them. Even if you don’t understand their situation, it is still heartwarming to know someone is thinking of you when you feel like no one is. On the other side of things, friends are not slaves. Don’t expect them to be there to help you with something if you turn and run when they need help from you because you don’t want the responsibility. You already have that responsibility by being their friend, even if that friend says it’s not required of you. When you repeatedly do this, it makes that friend feel like their only purpose is to keep you pleased. It’s not fun to feel like a slave to your will. In fact, it feels like crap. Another part of this lesson is to not repeatedly do something around someone if they have explicitly told you that they do not like it. Stop being high and mighty and saying that you don’t care what people think of what you do, because your friends are the ones whose thoughts and opinions you care about. If you disrespect those, then your friends constantly feel like you’re not listening to them. This feels even worse when combined with the slave feeling, because then your friends feel like a legitimate slave. No one should feel like they only exist to please you regardless of their opinion about it.

4) When your friend is doing something you don’t like, TELL THEM. They are your friend, and they will hold up just fine to constructive criticism. They constantly need to know how well they’re doing as your friend, so don’t be afraid to be honest with them. If anything, they’ll even thank you for being honest and do their best to correct their mistake.

In case you couldn’t tell, respect is of great importance to me when it comes to friendships. Maybe it’s just how I was brought up, but I have a very low tolerance for disrespect in friendships. I was also taught since I could form complete sentences that friends are more valuable than any possession that you’ll ever own. I still follow those teachings (thanks mostly to my father) because I believe that’s what makes me happy with the friendships that I do have. In fact, me being happy with my friends is probably what allows me to be as happy as I am, even in the face of huge amounts of academic stress.

For some reason, my brain is has been going nuts for the past few days and I’ve hardly been able to get a good amount of uninterrupted sleep. I’m fretting about things that I have no need to fret over, like classes starting again. I’ve gone through this for what, 5 semesters now? Come on, brain, work! (Not only is my brain letting me fret over stupid crap, but the lack of sleep has caused me to have quite a few “herp derp” moments already.)

On another note, at least I have awesome upcoming weekend festivities to think about. What’s not to like about a family game night? Only instead of relatives, they’re people that are part of my NC State family. :D

Am I the only person that can clearly see you running from your problems? You have nightmares about your past, so what do you do about it? You stay out late partying and going to clubs, pretending that there is nothing wrong and you’re perfectly fine. Quit lying to yourself. Pretending that you’re happy only works for so long, and I can already tell that it’s wearing down on you. I know you “hate” your family for what they did to you, and I fully understand that, but why don’t you stand up for yourself and confront them about what happened? If you only stood up for yourself and told them why you think what happened was wrong, then maybe you as well as them could let go of what happened and you could be happy without so much damn effort. I understand that confronting people is not exactly the most pleasant thing on the planet, but it usually has a far better outcome than sitting there and letting an old wound heal and reopen repeatedly. Of all people, the most important people in your life are your family. Most families are dysfunctional and full of problems (take mine for example), but in the end, they always seem to stay together somehow. So when a problem arises in your family, regardless of who is at fault, it needs to be confronted, because running from it will only make it worse. If you keep running, the nightmares won’t go away. They’ll just get worse, and then what are you going to do about it? What’s going to happen to you when you’ve reached your limit? It won’t be anything good, I can tell you that. Considering that you hardly talk to a single person in your family, and that you don’t really seem to contribute to your closest friendships, I’d hate to see where you end up. I honestly don’t even know why I’m so bothered by it, but it may be because I’ve lived with it once, and I don’t want to live with it again. So please, just stop running from your problems and rolling around in self pity or you’ve lost me as a friend for good.

I’m not a religious person in any sense, but when talking to a religious person earlier today I realized something. Religious people generally call it a voice from God calling them to do something, but for me, it was sort-of like a sign saying: “Here. You will find your happiness and dreams for the future right here and nowhere else.”

I only applied to three universities: Florida State University in the case that I decided to major in music or physics, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in the case of Aeronautical engineering and pilot training, and NC State for either Physics or Aerospace engineering.

Obviously I chose NC State, but it wasn’t because it was cheap or because it was close(ish) to home. I visited NC State first, and I felt quite welcome in its weirdly brick-y environment. Just to make sure, though, I visited both of the other schools so see if anything stood out to me saying that I should go to school there. There was nothing even close. In fact, both Florida State and Embry-Riddle were quite disappointing.

What I felt when I stepped onto NC State’s campus for the first time was more than just feeling like I’m going to school in the right place. It felt like home. It felt like I was already a part of it, like it’s where I was meant to be. I had never felt that feeling before in my life. Sure, I’ve always felt like I’ve belonged with my family, but this is different. I have never felt such a place just “call out” to me saying that I belong there. I’ve been to quite a few different cities around the US and a few across the Atlantic, and none other than Raleigh calls out to me like this.

The thing is, what’s so special about Raleigh? I have no family members here, and in fact had only driven through Raleigh just once with my sister on one of her choir tour things when we were younger. But yet every part of me assures me that this is my home and it always has been. This is my third year here now, and every year I’ve spent here, that feeling has only gotten stronger. 

Maybe it’s because I’ve never been happier. I’ve never felt more driven to accomplish my dreams. Back in Asheville, I only cared about getting out. I had dreams, but I wanted to get out of Asheville first so I could focus on accomplishing them. Here, my head is clear. Everything that I could ever dream of is essentially laid out in front of me. There are so many opportunities to take that I never could have imagined I would be given with my lack of drive and financial situation at home. And when I say lack of drive, I was still quite driven compared to most people I know. Let’s just say as soon as I hit college, that drive was given full throttle, and now it’s ready for take-off (Aerospace Engineering pun totally intended).

In fact, I’m so driven to do so many things upon graduation, and maybe even sooner, that my imagination will soar during a class lecture, so much so that I have to bring it back so that I don’t miss anything.

Another thing that sort-of hit me before my freshman year started in engineering camp was that I seem to have the perfect tools for this. The teachers were talking to us about creativity, three dimensional visualizations, mathematics, etc. I am incredibly creative and imaginative, yet also highly logical and mathematical at the same time. Not to mention, my visualization of every thing in my mind is naturally in three dimensions and I can rotate an object around without needing to touch it. Then I thought, “Wait a second, doesn’t an engineer need to be able to do all of these things?” (Ironically enough, my fellow engineering students lack some of these traits naturally, especially on the creativity end.) Before, I thought that I had to choose between one side of my brain or the other, but no. I have never thought of myself as an engineer, but now I can’t think of myself as anything else. It’s almost like it’s what I was meant to be all along. Like I was given the gifts of a great imagination and a strong sense of logic for this reason.

Before, in Asheville, I was worried that I would be lonely for the rest of my life. In fact, I was quite depressed through most of high school. I had never been in a healthy relationship, and every friendship I seemed to find failed miserably. I felt like it was my fault, but of course, shit happens and things don’t always work out between people. It’s no one’s fault. I came here, and all that worry vanished. All that matters is my dreams. Sure, I could find a lifelong bond with someone, as a friend, or even a so-called “soul-mate”, and that would be wonderful, but I almost don’t even need that. I don’t need to be in a relationship, and I don’t need to have copious amounts of friends. I just know that I need to be happy. It’s one of those things where you “just know”, and being the scientific person that I am, it drives me nuts that I can’t explain it. But I just know. 

This is where I’m meant to be.
This is what I’m meant to do.
This is me.

All throughout elementary school, middle school, and high school, I’ve been that smart, dorky kid that everyone asks to tell them how to do something. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, I got quite accustomed to it by the end of high school. I figure I live in an area where intelligence isn’t the main focus, because most of us were worried more about having enough money to stay alive than being able to graduate. Of course, for as long as I’ve remembered, I’ve been concerned with both.

I planned on going straight to college after high school, like most kids with an incredible drive to do something in the world. Every single year of high school, my teachers told me time and again; “College is gonna be different. It’s gonna be a lot harder, and instead of being near the top of your class, you’ll be about average.” Well, from a third-year college student’s perspective, they weren’t too far off. My particular degree plan is MUCH more challenging than my previous education ever was, and though it can be a bit terrifying and overwhelming, it’s also highly satisfying. However, when it comes to the “You’ll be about average” part, I certainly don’t feel that way. Considering it takes an incredibly intelligent individual to be in the College of Engineering, that certainly puts me above average. But then consider just the College of Engineering alone, and I feel like I’m still above average. Though this past semester’s grades brought my rank down a bit, I’m actually still statistically above average.

Most people I know would say that doesn’t surprise them because I’m an intelligent individual. Sure, I’ll agree there. I also have an incredible drive and a decent work ethic. It’s understandable that I’ve remained above average for the entirety of my education so far.

What baffles me, and this may sound a bit funny, is that I expected to stop getting the “You’re such a genius, how on Earth did you think of that?!” comments when correctly understanding something upon becoming a college student, yet I still get them quite often. I’ve always considered myself intelligent, but never genius.

Am I though? Am I a genius that simply failed to live up to her full potential until college and people just started seeing it? Or am I simply above average and the ‘average’ group sees me as a genius because they were above average in the past and therefore see anyone above them as genius?

The thing is, there are plenty of people in my position that I can think of off the top of my head that are quite intelligent, and I don’t even consider them geniuses. I think the only person I call ‘genius’ is one of my professors (not to his face, of course), because I’m pretty sure he actually is one. Then again, the word ‘genius’ seems to have a variable definition. I’ve always considered a genius to be a person that clearly stands far above even the smartest people in a group. In that case, by my own definition, I am no genius. Maybe I fit someone else’s definition of genius? Who knows? I might as well just go with it.