18 - the things we inherit from the people that raise us
I have a terrible habit of being unorganized.
I suppose it just came with being ADHD, but lately as I grew older I realized where this rather annoying inability to organize damn near anything came from: my mother. For an example, to find the house in a disarray weeks after the painstaking task of organizing, cleaning and purging things in the home has been something that made me throw up my hands and go "I give up; my bedroom is clean only when I personally think it's clean (i.e., no visible clutter - if nobody can see it, it doesn't exist)" once I've moved out in 2024. It's a boon that my room is a utility room that could somewhat fit in a super single bed, a small bedside table and a wheeled rack that acts as an open wardrobe and not much else - it means I have to be very deliberate in choosing what goes into my private space.
It's incredible - not always in a good way - how much my mother's inability to organize reflects on mine and how she keeps berating that I don't pay attention to details or that I'm just sloppy. I know she has ADHD - where else could I have inherited it from? My father is perfectly normal - but it's a bit sad to me that she only barely acknowledges it only recently but that her reasoning to not do anything about it is "I'm old now. I've lived long enough like this already".
The annoyance manifests into something almost rage-inducing whenever I have to process her work into documents that can be filed and kept on record. Today, it's putting up name lists of people eligible for a specific type of mandated mutual aid called "zakat" - for me personally, if any identifiable information is processed wrongly, it could mean someone who needs it won't be able to receive food or monetary aid due to having the wrong or missing identifiable information, usually full names. Yet every time this happens, I always get incredibly incomplete lists devoid of this crucial data. When I try to express that it's crucial for my mother to give me the exact, accurate information before she comes to me to convert these lists into a PDF document, her answer is always "Let me check back with the people that gave me this information". Zakat distribution is hardly the only thing where this inorganization manifests, of course, and trying to get her to compile all needed data into something I can easily parse and organize sometimes becomes a very frustrating task.
I know myself enough to understand that I get too angry if I don't have the complete data I need - which is incredibly ironic then that I end up forgetting or missing my own organization because I'm TOO focused on ensuring my data and documentation are complete.
It's funny how that comes around eventually. The last time I applied for a job, I forgot to print my own resume, despite ensuring the digital copies of all relevant information is complete and available. Living by myself means I miss out on long lectures about being unorganized, but I pay the price of not getting the job I applied for. Lost access cards mean I pay the penalty of MYR100 to the building's management. Books out of my sight means I rack up on library penalties. These are all equally important things, and I recognize that this inherited habit is a source of my own woes (especially the ones punishable by lost money).
You'll probably come out of this thinking "well, you shouldn't be so harsh on your mother if you're also prone to making those mistakes", and you're right - I do try not to be so harsh on it. After all, my mother is what makes me who I am - the quiet choice to not be involved in someone else's conflict, how the specific things that make us annoyed or angry align, how much we're so used to be leaders that we now just prefer to be in the background instead of in the spotlight. Whether we enjoy it or not, we inherit a lot of things from the people that raised us; our parents, our guardians, family members, the communities that nurture us. For good or for worse we carry a lot of these with us as we grow older. We learn to adapt and change the parts that give us problems or completely throw them away, hone the parts that help us face life's challenges head on.
I don't know how to conclude this post. There was a time when I would unabashedly say that I hate my mother for making me who I am and punishing me for it. But now I've settled into a comfortable compromise; she worked so hard to temper me to be who I am today. I would not be here today if it wasn't for her, unmedicated ADHD and possible autism be damned.