Fits and Starts and ADHD (with stories)

Ray Bradbury recommends writers write in fits and starts, like a nervous squirrel. This is what I’ve been doing, more out of necessity than on purpose, or as a result of squirrel-nerves. My teaching life soaks up brain space, and I’ve found adjusting rapidly between the two can be awkward. It takes me a couple of days to shake off one mindset and get fully into another. It’s how I work best, fully engrossed, but the interim is weird. I have things I know I want to do for both, and often end up doing neither. It’s a common symptom of ADHD, and detrimental to everything, so I need time set aside devoted to each. This requires some logistical cartwheels and careful planning. Not strengths of one with ADHD either.

Since I mentioned it twice in the first paragraph, you may have already (correctly) guessed that this is the post I’ve chosen to talk about ADHD. It’s a story that begins in 1991 when my mom was listening to the radio. ADHD was just becoming a thing, building momentum throughout the late 80’s in terms of diagnoses, but it wasn’t until they came up with a checklist that could be easily shared that knowledge about it became commonplace. An expert came on the radio when I was nine years old and my mother heard an exact description of my behavior broadcast into her living room. She called in and was given a phone number.

I was among the first to be diagnosed in British Columbia. I had people observing me, filled questionnaires, having me use special time management schedules. I hated it all. It made me feel like a freak at a time when I wanted nothing more than to fit in. Since my parents didn’t want to put me on medication, and since I had nothing but resentment for the people observing and examining, interest in my case waned. Before long there were enough of The Diagnosed to go around.

I didn’t end up using medication to deal with ADHD until university. In high school I could do well enough with a bare minimum of effort. That wasn’t the case in university. I was on academic probation after my first couple of semesters, before everything changed. The meds did two things that allowed me to excel.

1 – It allowed me to focus.

2 – It kept me awake for as long as I wanted to be.

I did well, and rode it all the way to a masters (with distinction in the written portion, I might add) then had to stop taking the meds. My sleep hasn’t been the same since. I would say I gently abused my prescription back in the day. I used the pills for the intended purpose, and just a little more. I’ve since learned a host of coping mechanisms that have allowed me to function (and get a teaching degree) without them. One such mechanism is exploiting my hyper-focus tendencies. There are ways to wield my “disorder”, to bend it to my will and working my passions into as much as I can tends to work. Not always, but very often.

What that means in terms of writing is Bradbury’s scurry method fits my tendencies beautifully. Words hold a power over me that can capture my hyper-focus well. Teaching requires more deliberate effort and leaning into my coping mechanisms more, but I love both. It’s not always easy, but the effort is worth it.

That is the silver lining to something that has had a largely poisonous role in my life. ADHD comes off as laziness, which it isn’t. Laziness is avoiding work. I want to do it, I usually start to do it, but much work is just not stimulating (that’s why it’s work), and to force myself to sit there and get it done is like trying to hold onto water. I physically cannot focus on things that don’t capture me and the harder I try the worse it gets and my failures crush me.

I’ve come across countless stories like mine. People are told if something can’t hold their interest, they must not care about it. That being late for, or forgetting obligations entirely, is a sign of disrespect. I care, I respect, and not being able to just do something feels like losing control and letting people down. What does it feel like? I’m up and moving to do something that hasn’t even fully processed in my brain. My body reacts to an impulse that hasn’t even formed, but it’s urgent. I’ll be sitting, working, then I’m up and it’s as though my brain comes up with an excuse on the fly – I’m hungry, I forgot to respond to a text, laundry, there are my keys I couldn’t find them earlier today. The car’s out of gas, I need to fill it tonight or I won’t be able to get to work. I live exclusively in the moment, and unless I’m careful, and I mean very deliberate about how I act and think, out of sight, out of mind could be the defining phrase of my life.

That narrative of laziness, irresponsibility, forgetfulness, and all the other perceptions that come along with ADHD, work their way into a person. The guilt I feel at being unable to do some of the simplest bloody things. Folding laundry, keeping my responsibilities organized, remembering where I left my laptop, time management, running back to get my phone, all of it feeds a narrative. If I’m unable to do such basic things, what good am I?

I’m good at a great many things, and I owe it in large part to my ADHD. I need to remind myself of that all the time. Depression comes hand-in-hand with ADHD, and based on my experience, it’s the narrative mentioned previously. It’s feeling as though you can’t control your own actions. And when those symptoms are relieved by medication, it becomes painfully obvious how detrimental it is to your mental health.

I want to do the mundane things, I truly do, but those activities just aren’t able to hold me in place. Here’s a little trick that works for me, I put on music and dance as I do the difficult to stick with stuff (dishes, laundry, cleaning, etc). Moving your body to music feels good, providing the dopamine while I go about the task with my mind elsewhere. My wiggle-based moves have improved immensely as a byproduct.

I’m also impulsive, sometimes dangerously so. As in the time I was in Las Vegas with my brother and a group of our friends. It’s a place built for people with ADHD and it was my first time. An aimless impulse shoved me out of an elevator without my friends. I remember it as a physical sensation, being thrust out. I was lost in Vegas for three hours intoxicated and alone. Everyone was angry with me when I found them.

It’s taken decades of concerted effort to be able to function effectively without meds, but the mental health struggles go on. Coping with that has gotten easier as well.