ADHD is not a quirk. It is ruining my life. I am disorganized, I am in debt, I am paralyzed. I can’t even get help; I have tried navigating the maze of finding a doctor who will accept my crappy exchange insurance but I always end up throwing in the towel. I thought I found one, once, but sike, he’s an addiction counselor who refuses to prescribe stimulant medication on principle.
Not that I’m opposed to trying nonstims again, but I was prescribed Strattera in high school and it made me so drowsy I failed chemistry because I couldn’t stay awake even with a full night of sleep. Also, bonus, his profile on the site I used to find him lied, and he doesn’t actually accept my insurance. Here’s a $500 bill for our 45 minute zoom call where I accused you of drug seeking. I got his practice to cancel the charge but still.
ADHD is ugly; ADHD looks like every chair in my apartment being full of clutter (and me subsequently freaking out because I hate clutter). it looks like brushing my teeth every two or three or five days. It looks like being able to hold on to my job as a waiter nothing else. It looks like me having the money to pay my bills, me wanting to pay those bills, and then me getting sent to collections anyway. ADHD looks like ghosting an old best friend because I’m too embarrassed to keep up with him. It looks like my partner shouldering more of the housework than is fair. And I get to look back on all this behavior, identify and accept that I am the problem, and then I get to do fuck all to fix it. ADHD looks like a horizon that gets narrower and narrower every day.
And I feel alone. ADHD is not cute. It sucks to suck.
Yes yes yes! The clutter, the teeth, the bills, the ghosting. Watching things you can and want to do not get done is a special kind of frustrating.
However:
Naahhhh, fuck that.
If a shelf is too high for me to reach, I don’t suck for being short. No amount of people telling me to reach harder will help.
The entire rest of the world is the problem. Don’t internalize that bullshit, don’t blame yourself for things you know could not have possibly gone differently.
You’re right. I don’t suck. My coping mechanisms are insufficient for the tasks I have set for myself. Those coping mechanisms can be made stronger. And no amount of coping will fix a broken healthcare system. I just feel about an inch tall today. It’s hard not to turn it inward sometimes.
Yeah it sure is.