Adulting with ADHD

First, I must warn you. This is not going to be a “how to” post. This is going to be a “this is so hard” post. To commiserate. No advice here. Sorry. There’s probably plenty of other ADHD bloggers with their shit (sorta) together though so… Okay, moving on.

First of all, I wasn’t diagnosed with inactive ADHD until I was 26. (It’s all classified as ADHD these days. So basically, Inactive means that the hyperactivity is in the brain, and Active means the hyperactivity manifests physically as well.) That means I struggled with school and life and everything for a long time and I never knew why. I’ve always had that there’s something wrong with me feeling and who would have thought that finding out that there was, in fact, something wrong with me would make me feel better! Well, not better, but understood I guess.

Why? Because it erased my fears that maybe there was nothing wrong. Maybe I was just lazy. Maybe I was just kind of a waste of space. A waste of breathe as a person. But no, a diagnosis meant there’s an actual problem, and if not fixed, can at least be managed better than stumbling my way through life because my sense of direction has failed me again.

I can’t think of a single area of my life that my ADHD doesn’t affect. As a kid, I missed birthday parties because I totally forgot about them. I got bad grades on projects because they seemed so overwhelming that I procrastinated and then had to cram in a weeks worth of work into a few hours. Getting older didn’t change any of these things. What changed was the impact of my highly irritating quirks.

Now, instead of forgetting birthday parties, I would forget about a shift at work and arrive super late. I actually missed out on a job because my sense of direction failed me in the biggest way and I never made it to orientation. I get overwhelmed by bills and often pay late because I procrastinate on those now. And the brain fog? Well, let’s just say when other moms started talking about “mom brain,” I didn’t know what they were talking about because I have always been like this.

Forgetful. Absentminded. Lost. Overwhelmed. I. Am. A. Mess.

I can’t seem to finish a single household chore without getting distracted and starting on another. And believe me, getting much done at all is hard enough. Seeing a mess makes my brain shut down and not want to do anything at all. My view as I’m typing this is a desk with a billion unsorted papers scattered everywhere that I’ve been meaning to get to for…. forever.

And with my kids… Sometimes I’ll have to ask them to repeat themselves more than once because I just couldn’t focus on what they were saying. I am completely useless with my sons math homework because math has always been like an alien language to me. Recently, I missed an important doctors appointment simply because I forgot about it. And don’t even get me started on where my keys are because your guess is as good as mine. And biggest one, I am the worlds most annoying fidgeter. I think my ADHD pairs up with my anxiety on this one and I drive my husband crazy with my leg twitching and awkward hand movements and inability to sit still without moving my foot or my finger to trace an object across the room.

I am the worst housekeeper ever and completely unreliable in planning anything or getting anywhere on time. And believe me, it annoys me as much as it annoys the people around me. But I know now that I’m not alone. I’m not just lazy and useless. I have an actual medical diagnosis to explain why my brain is the way that it is. Hopefully soon, I’ll even have a fancy new prescription to change my life and make it better.