Everything Will Be Fine
Two somewhat related stories about genetics, mental disorders, and walking on a Texas service road. Originally published 12/24/2014 but updated "recently."
Two or three months ago, I was diagnosed with adult ADHD.
“Not just ADD?” I blurt out. I was hoping for something a little milder, I guess.
“No,” Doctor Quesada says. He has a calm manner and looks up from his laptop as he talks to me with a softness to his voice, and he kind of reminds me of a slightly effeminate Latin Casey Kasem. “You do this thing with your fingers when you’re idle. I don’t even think you notice it. This stretching, wiggling thing.”
Kareem has told me the same thing. I picked it up once while watching a K-Pop video, and the girls did a complex tutting choreography with their fingers and hands which looked neat. Was I doing that throughout the day? A thirty-eight-year-old man probably shouldn’t be doing that, should he?
I tuck my hands between my legs and the couch I’m sitting on and suck in my stomach by instinct.
It shouldn’t be a surprise, should it? Concentration has always been an issue for me my entire life. I only remember things like appointments or where my keys are by being neurotic about where everything is at all times, Google Calendars and web applications that send notes to myself after six hours, one week, three months. Contact this group, write a document to send, set up an appointment for next Wednesday. Check my appointments to make sure I haven’t forgotten them again and again. Coping mechanisms, I am told, and I’ve certainly heard that term my entire life.
In college, I barely graduated above the minimum GPA necessary. I wrote off my terrible study habits due to the co-ed community service fraternity I joined and the lack of interest from Dad ticking the “Computer Science and Engineering Major” checkbox in my college application. But that was every Asian American growing up, and we all assumed that the only way for me to keep up with everyone else was with more studying on my part and more yelling and discipline on theirs.
But still. Anything with the word hyperactivity makes it sound like I’m a seven-year-old pretending he’s a tractor-trailer on a playground. As a kid, I remember marching into the living room, turning it to channel two, and acting out every single dancer from Solid Gold in front of my parents and his naval buddy friends. That’s just being a kid, right?
“We’ll give you Vyvanse, thirty milligrams,” he says while he scribbles notes on a green branded Post-It Note and hands it to me.
Growing up I played a little game with myself: if I could live a perfectly normal life by 29 — that was the age Angela had her most severe schizophrenic episode, the one that caused her to break from society completely — I would be okay, and any faulty genetics I had running in my DNA wouldn’t betray me. When my thirtieth birthday rolled around and I didn’t hear Jesus or Satan’s voice in my head like my sister did, I belted Living on a Prayer at a San Francisco karaoke bar full of my friends, silently thinking to myself this is it I have nothing to worry about anymore all the while coming down from all the drugs I took the day before because I didn’t want to feel that awful emptiness like I always did, not on my thirtieth birthday, no sir.
I’m thirty-eight now. Well played, fate.
“We’ll have you take it for thirty days. It’s a lower dosage than usual, but we’ll have you ramp up to see how you feel about it. Who else in your family has it?”
That last fucking sentence. “Excuse me?”
“Who else in your family has it?” Doctor Quesada repeats. “Because, you know, it’s genetic.”
“I’m not sure,” I say.
But that is a lie, because I have ideas.
The only family I’ve ever really known or grown up with is on my dad’s side. We all spent Thanksgiving and Christmas together as children, and all the cousins grew up to be normal adults; for the most part, Chris and Grace are the attractive, popular cousins, and Bernie and Darren are the smart ones.
Angela and I were always the freaks: The crazy daughter, the gay son.
In contrast, I met my maternal grandfather once, in Taiwan, when I was ten — he looked like one of those old men you see in illustrated children's books about Chinese folk tales, with their wrinkles and their wizened eyes — I don’t remember much past that. There’s a photo of me where I’m holding a live shrimp at what I’m assuming was his shrimp farm in Kaohsiung, one part grinning to the camera and one part terror because most of my experience with shrimp up to that point was in the frozen foods aisle at Safeway, pink masses of seafood protein jammed inside a sealable plastic bag.
His wife was not there and was never brought up. Inevitably, as curious as kids would get, I would ask Dad why I’d never met Grandma before — usually in the parking lot or on a car ride, somewhere where Mom wasn’t around. And he would start getting mad and would talk faster and louder — all in Chinese, using words I couldn’t understand, getting angrier and angrier as the minutes passed by. When he realized I couldn’t understand anything he was saying, he would sigh and tap his temple with his finger. “Sick.” There would be constant retells of this, sometimes on my end, but mostly on his, when he was mad at Mom for whatever reason.
In later years, he would pair this with an additional story: that my maternal grandfather — the old man at the shrimp farm — asked my father to marry his youngest daughter.
“Like, an arranged marriage?” I asked. Dad’s dad had an arranged marriage as well. Grandma was wife number two, and she hated the other wives. I had to report on it in my World War II class.
Dad paused. “Suggested.”
And then finally, in high school, he would add another caveat, that final straw making me avoid the topic as much as I could: your grandmother — on your mother’s side, he emphasized — was the reason why Angela was sick. I imagined a faceless Chinese woman in a qipao, poisoning my family tree, and as an angsty teenager wanting to get the fuck out of dodge as quickly as possible, I didn’t know whether I hated these people I didn’t know more or my dad for telling me all of this.
It's four forty-five in the morning and I'm lying in bed at the Aloft a budget hotel room in a strip mall minutes from the San Antonio Airport gray carpet corporate art on walls reminds me of that office job in 2018 no it was 2017 second day in town for work but my third day taking the full dosage of this pill this pill this amphetamine.
Am I going to sleep tonight ever again? I'm learning really quickly the primary side effect of Vyvanse is insomnia. Why wouldn't it be insomnia? It's a fucking amphetamine like the stuff they give fighter pilots to stay awake for bombing the japanese during world war two or college students during finals week or—the word amphetamine triggers something in me—a flash of that night in the end up patio and — nope don’t go there right now.
Sighing makes me feel a little better so I try to close my eyes take a deep breath what was supposed to be a meditation technique turns into a mental audit: Where are you? (hotel room San Antonio work trip) How are you feeling right this second? (wired anxious racing) Who would I call if this got worse? (Kareem maybe but it's 2AM in Miami) Is my heartbeat supposed to be this fast?
Am I high? No it doesn't feel like that I'm just really fucking awake like someone replaced my blood with espresso and my thoughts with hummingbirds and I need to go to work in an hour fuck. I catch myself saying that out loud into the darkness of the room and I sit up in the bed out of frustration I've been lying in this bed for a couple of hours now body tired but mind racing whirring clicking through tabs like browser windows I can't close.
The ceiling has a pattern I hadn't noticed before or maybe I'm just now really seeing it for the first time like that thing they say about how we don't really SEE anything we just process shortcuts of the world around us unless we truly focus and—is that normal or is this medication making me notice everything?
Six-fifteen a.m. I've calculated I've been awake for nearly 24 hours Internet search ADHD forums people talking about routines and dosage someone's wife takes it every morning when she wakes up at 6 a.m. so the effects can gently subside throughout the whole day. "Refreshed" she says in the post which convinces me more than it should that it's a perfectly acceptable thing to do which is obviously ridiculous because she's a complete stranger on the internet and what works for her might not—but I need sleep and maybe just maybe—
"Maybe that's what I need," I think through a fog of exhaustion and poor judgment. "My body just needs to reset, that's all," like I'm talking about restarting a glitchy phone and not altering my brain chemistry even further.
Unlike the forty minutes it usually takes (forty-three minutes yesterday, thirty-eight minutes the day before that I'm tracking the onset because that's what you're supposed to do right?) it takes what feels like twenty minutes before I notice something: jolt like touching an electric fence the most alert I've been over the past week like switching from standard definition to 4K and suddenly this hotel room is too small too confining too—Wrong move, champ. My body starts to shake and I have a sudden and urgent need to move to walk this energy off to—
(on with sweatpants t-shirt the shoes by the door headphones why am I grabbing headphones?)
Elevator down to the lobby softly playing four-to-the-floor deep house music the kind they play in the lounges in South Beach too loud too much but I can't take the headphones off now because I'm already past the reception desk girl looking up from her phone for just a second our eyes meet or do they? sliding glass doors WHOOOOSH Texas dawn air humid heavy like wet wool against my skin.
My mother has only told me the following facts about my maternal grandmother: she liked to paint and gambled too much, so she would tell me, "You shouldn’t gamble when you grow up."
That’s all I got.
Mom has no anecdotes about her mother’s quirks or terrible habits. Dad would usually drop hints when he got upset at her, which was often: “Do you know that no one knows when your mother’s birthday is? Her brothers and sisters had to fill in her gift certificate for her.”
I have no reason to believe he would be lying. I imagine my maternal grandmother, a beautiful, young, rich Chinese woman from one of those period movies like Raise the Red Lantern, lying in a fetal position on a bed, smoking opium and abandoning her children.
The day I graduated from college, my parents drove up from the Bay Area. When I answered the door to my apartment in my cap and gown, I discovered they had brought in a pretty girl Taiwanese my age—a cousin I was meeting for the very first time. I did my best to be polite, making small talk in my broken Mandarin. If I had any warning, I may have presented a list of questions about mom’s side of the family or learned how to say the sentences better.
“Have you ever met our grandmother?” I asked.
Her face darkened. “Yes.” A longer pause, as if she was trying to figure out what to say. “She didn’t like girls very much.”
I nodded and changed the subject. In the ending of Raise the Red Lantern—spoiler alert—the beautiful, rich young Chinese woman goes crazy, walking around her giant palace completely catatonic. Sometimes, I imagine my maternal grandmother like that, too.
Strip mall parking lot empty but lights still on at the—past the tire shop crossing the street into darkness but there's an illuminated Starbucks with a single employee behind counter she looks up briefly our eyes maybe connect I think it's too dark outside I'm a shadow moving past streetlights every two or three blocks everything around me shades of deep blues purples navy like the sweater Mom gave me last Christmas that I never wear hints of sunrise coming but not for a couple of hours you're going to be tired for a couple of hours for a couple of days maybe forever?
But I keep walking past a closed IHOP (reminds me of college when we'd eat there after studying—were we actually studying or just pretending to?) past the multiplex with movie posters for films I meant to see but never did. I'll be okay I need to be okay there's a meeting at 9 and I need to present those analytics that I still haven't—
Another light in the distance brighter than the others, sign for a diner or something and like a moth to a flame (such a cliché my creative writing professor would have hated that) I head towards it without thinking about direction or time or where exactly I am in this city I barely know. I imagine how a State Trooper would see this: some short, fat Asian guy in sweatpants power-walking through an industrial zone at dawn suspicious probably on something which technically I am but it's prescribed and my heart is hammering now I can almost taste anxiety at the back of my throat copper penny metallic like blood or fear.
I’ve had friends ask why I haven’t gone on a quest to find more information about my Mom’s side of the family. They point out that it would be great writing material, and that would be true. Are they like the one aunt I met in Hong Kong, who was polite but didn’t strike up much of a conversation, or like my mom’s younger brother, who overstayed his welcome until they were shouted out of the house? Do they call their sons and daughters every afternoon and talk about nothing for twenty minutes? Are there other cousins out there with your face?
One is the communication issue: I’m an American, albeit one who speaks broken Mandarin to his mom because that’s how we communicate. I can say that my dinner was delicious, that we went to an Italian restaurant, or that it’s very hot and muggy in Florida right now.
What’s Chinese for “I’m visiting you in Taiwan to learn if our family has a history of mental illness?”
Two, Mom hasn’t really brought up the subject of family, so I haven’t either. A couple of years ago, right after the divorce, she was ready to visit Taiwan for a month or two to visit relatives before a frantic phone call in the middle of the night two or three days before she was supposed to board her plane.
“Ernie, I need you to help me call the airlines and ask how to give refunds. I’ve decided to cancel the trip.”
“Why?”
There’s a noticeable pause on the other end. “I don’t want to inconvenience them.”
I would ask if she could stay at a hotel, knowing the answer was no, staying at a hotel when you’re visiting family is sacrilege. Offering to stay at a hotel to a Chinese family member is the equivalent of calling them and letting them know that they are terrible hosts and, thusly, horrendous people. I tried it with my mom last week when I offered to stay at a hotel while visiting her in California. It didn’t go too well.
Just as a mom does not contact her family, very little of my family has contacted my mom, save for a crazy uncle who showed up in our living room that quickly scurried off when Angela threatened to kill him. I wonder why they haven’t, and I wonder what they say about us. Do they know we exist?
If they know, do they think we’re crazy?
What if they’re right?
Just need to walk some more work off this whatever this is medication side effect panic attack existential crisis genetic time bomb I don't know I don't—
Dad's voice suddenly in my head: “You know why she's like that, don't you” talking about Mom, about Angela, about mental illness threading through our family tree like a poison vine. Are there others? Cousins in Taiwan I've never met with the same wiring, same chemical imbalances, same—
(truck roars past too close warm air displacement pushes against me)
I stop. Where am I? How long have I been walking?
My t-shirt is damp with sweat yet I'm cold my fingers tingling. I've been walking and walking and walking and I think the shaking is subsiding a little bit now but hard to tell because now I'm just tired so tired but wired a contradiction a paradox a—
How do I feel?
Alert hyper-alert super-fucking-alert I can feel my heart beating through the headphones I'm wearing (playing nothing I realize just now I've been wearing a pair of headphones without listening to music or a podcast for how long? an hour?) My face is damp sweat and it's about to rain the summer storms in San Antonio can be just as intense as the storms in Miami like the one where we lost power for three days and the food in the fridge—OH MY GOD DUDE FOCUS.
Where am I?
Standing on the side of a dirt road somewhere in rural San Antonio houses and fences warehouses the brightly lit sign is actually a taqueria open early for truckers and night-shifters with their cups of coffee and breakfast tacos. It's an oasis warm reds and oranges inside concrete drizzling rain semis whooshing by. I should go in but this isn't my world and I'm not hungry the thought of food makes me—
Why have I been walking?
My mind blanks—complete emptiness—then the laser focus part of the medication kicks in again replacing my need to reach a far-away taqueria with a different objective: retrace your steps get back to the hotel shower meeting prep slides analytics.
"I'll be okay," I try to convince myself out loud and a voice pops in my head: you will, you know. everything will be fine. For a brief terrifying second I panic because voices are how it started for Angela—she'd hear things whispers instructions—but no this is just my own internal monologue isn't it? It has to be. I accept the message being delivered to me: I'll be OK, everything will be fine.
I turn around and start walking back away from the lights and people but towards where I need to be need to shower need to look normal need to be professional need to be at work in an hour or two and the other remote co-workers will ask how I am in the lobby and I will say fine I will say I had a tough time sleeping but otherwise it's okay we will all climb into a rental car and drive to the office together and no one will know that I've been walking for miles in the dark because I couldn't handle the medication that's supposed to make me normal.
I will be OK. Everything will be fine. I will be OK. Everything will be fine. I will be OK. Everything will be fine.
(But what if I'm not?)