Routines, Schedules, and Daily Living...

<RANT>

I just had a horrible morning...

Now that Adult Protective Services has found me housing that is affordable on disability and is safe and secure I am working on recovering habits, routines, schedules and my ADLs.  In no way are these things easy for me.

For example, for nearly the past 5 months I have no brushed my teeth at all...firstly, I despise the sensation of something foreign in my mouth, I find it deeply disturbing.  But the thing is I have implant dentistry which must be kept clean or I could get a severe infection in my jaw pretty quickly...

About a week ago, I created a new routine; Wake by 6am, Coffee, Shower, Brush Teeth, Meditate.  I have done excellent for 7 days, but with today came a change in my schedule, I had to Wake without coffee and go and have a fasting blood test.  While I'd managed to do all those other things in order, they were (none of them) done well at all, simply because the coffee was "missing."  This has less (or nothing) to do with a caffeine addiction, as it does, building a routine.

Then, I get to the blood test and was told, "insurance wouldn't pay for it" (a ROUTINE blood test) and I just imploded.  I interrupted my morning routine for this?

That wouldn't be so bad if I were neurotypical, but you see any shift in my routine and it can completely undo the habit I have tried to create. And that's not all...the way my thinking works (outside of my control mostly) is that this routine is a failure and trying to rebuild it nearly impossible until I am in an entirely new situation.  I don't think it has gone this far, this particular time, but the fear and anxiety that it will is enough to derail me from even trying.

This is really, REALLY hard on my self-esteem because this has been the cycle I have gone through during my entire life...one step forward, four steps back (it seems.)

The smallest disturbance in my surroundings or routine from the "outside" is totally unnerving to me.  Part of ACC is having a really bizarre memory...I have been dubbed by many the "encyclopedia of useless information."  My ability to remember facts and pieces of information is huge, but my ability to remember what I had for breakfast, or to take the trash out or brush my teeth doesn't exist.  I completely depend upon the sameness of my environment and routine in order to get by in life.

And they wonder why I could never keep a "normal" job?

I am just SO frustrated in this moment, and I wish people could understand how difficult "normal-average" life can be for me.

This issue with routines and schedules pervades every single part of my life without question, the unknown, scares, confuses and confounds me, and I cling to sameness and abhor and change in routine, because without it, I wander in a wasteland of confusion and on a wheel like  a rat, never accomplishing anything new.

</END OF RANT>

~Joseph