ADHD and How I.. SQUIRREL!

I sit here beginning to write this article when in all honesty I should be doing housework. I look around at the mess. Dirty clothes are strewn about the floor. Piles of random junk. Things are completely out of place. There's no organization whatsoever. Yet, I seem to know where things are. My organized chaos. I feel as though it's an outward projection of my mind. Chaotic but still functional. The joys of ADHD.

All my life I was odd. I got picked on in school and had a best friend here and there but usually, they would either move away or decide to become one of the popular kids. Other kids would call me "retard". I was an outcast. I spent my days in a classroom daydreaming. I would use my textbooks and any objects I could find to fuel my imagination and create my own world. I frequently had the teacher slam a yardstick on my desk to get my attention. It got my attention alright. It also scared the crap out of me.

When you have ADHD, you tend to be incredibly sensitive to tactile stimuli. Your clothes feel too itchy or too tight and it aggravates you on a much higher level than it would for a neurotypical person. I was never able to wear a regular bra and I still can't to this day. I don't even like sports bras but I'm able to tolerate them.

When I was in 4th grade, our school implemented uniforms for the first time. My mom bought me the skirts. They fit just fine when I was standing up, but when I sat down they felt suffocating.

One time, I decided it would be a good idea to unzip the side of my skirt and cover it with my jacket while sitting down and then simply zip it up when I went to stand back up. But here's the problem. Even children who don't have ADHD tend to get distracted and forget. Add ADHD to the mix and you've got an embarrassing moment waiting to happen. I had to go to the teacher's desk and I forgot to zip up. When I stood up, all eyes were on me. There I was. My skirt on the floor. Barbie underwear in full view. Considering I'm a ginger I'm sure my face was redder than Clifford the big red dog! I don't recall what happened after that. I'm sure my brain blocked out the aftermath because it was too traumatic to remember. Thanks, brain!

The school wanted my parents to put me on medication but they never did. My parents never even took me to the doctor to get an official ADHD diagnosis. Sometimes I wonder how the rest of my school years would have played out if I would have received medical treatment. Perhaps I would have graduated instead of dropping out in 9th grade. Maybe not. What people fail to understand is education is not a one-size-fits-all. For those of us with ADHD, learning has to be fun and interactive, and engaging. Otherwise, we have no interest and we can't bring ourselves to focus on stuff that doesn't engage us. We'll only get frustrated and overwhelmed and ultimately give up.

There's more to ADHD than just the attention aspect. There's an emotional aspect. Not all of us bounce off the walls. Many of us don't actually. Not outwardly anyway. Instead, we bounce off the walls of our brains. You look at us and see us sitting down doing little to nothing. Perhaps we're just scrolling through Facebook or Youtube. But you know what's really going on in our head? Chaos and Disorder. A million different thoughts. A million different worries. A million different scenarios. That being said, I'm convinced Dr. Strange definitely has ADHD.

Did you know that most people who work in the Emergency field have ADHD? Doctors, Nurses, Surgeons, Police, Firefighters, EMTs, and more. They do well because more often than not when crisis strikes, those of us who are Neurodiverse think clearer and remain calmer than Neurotypical people. It's funny how it works because when there's not a crisis happening you'll find many of us wrapped up in our own personal mental crisis and we're acting like it's the end of the world. So perhaps many of us seek out real genuine crisis situations so that we don't focus on the imaginary crisis situations of our mind.

When you grow up, do you know what the hardest thing about ADHD is?

Adulting.

People think we're nothing but lazy slobs. Based on the outward appearance, yeah we sure look it don't we? But it's deeper than that. You see only the mess of our house or our work environment. You don't see the mental mess. You don't see the mental overwhelm and exhaustion. You don't see us psyching ourselves up to tackle the mess around us. You don't see the anxiety or depression that so often coexists with ADHD. You don't see our feelings that we're a failure, a disappointment, a bad parent, a bad spouse, and just an all-around bad person.

All you see is a sink full of dishes. All we see is a pile of dishes so high it could embarrass Mount Everest. All you see is a box of junk to be sorted through and put away in proper places. All we see is a box of mental gymnastics that will require us to wrestle with ourselves "I shouldn't throw this. I've had it for years and haven't used it but I might need it later." and "Putting this away would require me to clean out the closet and I don't have the mental energy to tackle that right now."

When you have ADHD things seem so much worse to you than they actually are and you often get so overwhelmed you decide to not even try. You think to yourself, "It'll just be like this again next week so what's the point?" It's exhausting and we beat ourselves up daily. Remember the house-elf Dobby from the Harry Potter Books? Yeah. It's like that. BAD DOBBY!!

When I reached my mid-twenties, I still had not been officially diagnosed. I didn't even think of ADHD. I just thought I was a failure in all aspects of my life. It seemed like no matter how hard I tried, I would take two steps forward, three steps back, put my left leg in, put my left leg out, put my left leg in, and I shake it all about. I do the hokey pokey and I turn myself around and lose my sense of direction.

I finally went to the doctor for help. They asked a bunch of questions and determined that I most definitely fit ADHD to the T. They started me on an antidepressant which did very little. It seemed to make me a little calmer but It didn't even touch my focus issues or my ADHD overwhelm. After that, I was put on Ritalin. That one did nothing at all. I might as well have been taking sugar pills. Adderall made me feel too zombie-like. It calmed my brain but I zoned out too much. And then there was Vyvanse.

It was a perfect fit. It transformed my brain from old-fashioned Internet Explorer where you had 30 different windows open at the same time overlapping each other and knew where nothing was, into Internet Explorer 7 with the new feature of tabbed browsing! Still lots of thoughts in my head but I was easily able to pull one thought to the front of my brain and focus on that alone.

For the first time in my life. I felt like a functional human being. I felt like Superwoman. I could bring myself to clean and cook and do all the wonderful adulting. It even helped with impulse control and binge eating! But unfortunately, there are a few downsides. It makes hyperfocus so much worse. If you're scrolling through Youtube or Facebook when the medicine kicks in, you're gonna be stuck there for hours.

It also takes away your desire to eat anything at all. I would go all day without eating until at night when it would finally start wearing off and I could eat supper. It can dehydrate you as well.

It also can mess with your blood pressure. I took it for a while with no problems. And eventually, I would start getting extremely hot and sweating, and weak. I took my blood pressure and it was super high. I decided to cut down on my dose and it would still happen so finally, I decided to quit.

It's hard to be a parent with ADHD. Even harder if your child also has ADHD. When your child is smothering you or making tons of noise and bouncing off the walls, you get flooded with sensory overwhelm and you tend to lash out. And then you feel guilty because your sweet child was simply being a child. He wasn't doing anything wrong. Just playing. They don't understand that the screaming and the jumping around and the banging on stuff legitimately hurt your senses. It's not their fault. But it's not yours either. I stopped fussing at him and yelling. And for his sake and mine, I just walk away. Go sit in the bathroom. Walk outside. Anything to remove me from the sensory overwhelms because I'd rather walk away than stay and crush his spirit. After all, I was once a child too.

ADHD may come with many difficulties and challenges. Sometimes It feels like a curse. At the same time, there's a beautiful side of ADHD that isn't usually spoken about. ADHD has always been associated with bad behavior. But what about creative behavior? We see the world through a different lens than most neurotypical people. We see the beautiful intricate details of life. You'll find many of us are creative artistic people. Writers and Painters. Poets and Dreamers. Musicians and Dancers. Beautiful Freethinkers.

We're not dumb. We're smart. We're insightful. We're beautiful in all of our chaotic glory. We spend our days fighting to tackle the messes around us. It's not that we don't want to do it. We just don't know where to begin.

Despite our struggles, our gifts make ADHD worth having. Even though sometimes we feel overwhelmed, we love our gifts. And we wouldn't trade it for a "SQUIRREL!!"

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