I was sitting there in the chair. Beyond frustrated. I’d been working for hours.
Actually, no, make that days!
And yet, somehow...
...only two things from my two do list were completed. Just two. That can’t be right.
Double take.
Yep, it’s right (sigh).
At this realization, I suddenly went from feeling like a hard-working superhero who can conquer the world, to feeling like I’d been sailing on the titanic the whole week, but didn’t know I was going nowhere fast.Or that I was about to crash against a hard reality.
And when that crash happened, I started drowning in an ocean of anxiety.
Swimming through a sea of panic. Barely able to keep my head above water.
My head bobbed under the water as the anxious waves rolled over me, choking me and forcing me under. I choked on the swirling current of harsh reality that was my unfinished tasks for the day.
Thought after thought continued to punch me in the stomach.
"You still have to do laundry. You can’t wear the same underwear for 3 days in a row. That’s just nasty, you slobby slothsicle."
"Have you even eaten today? You seriously couldn’t manage to find the time to cook a 10 minute meal? Seriously? That’s just basic human stuff. That’s NOT even difficult to do, you bum on a stick."
"Um, remember that piece of mail you got 3 weeks ago? You still have to deal with that. It’s not that hard… I mean, seriously, it takes 2 minutes. WHY can’t you do it? Loser.”
“Why aren’t you working on your e-comm store right now? Focus! Think about mail and food later. Gahh."
"My gosh, how do people with kids manage to take care of themselves AND other humans? Moms HAVE to make meals for people! Gasp!"
"I could never have a family. I can’t even finish 2 items on a to-do list in a week… no way could I cook a dinner every night.”
Gulp.
The thoughts that engulfed my brain swirled faster and faster.
I sunk further into the sea of panic as the reality of these thoughts chilled me to my core, seeping deeper into my bones, embedding themselves permanently inside me.
The shoreline of peace and calm slipped off further into the distance and became unattainable to reach, as the waves of anxiety crashed more intensely now on my brain.
That's when it suddenly hit me...
“I’m always busy, but never productive.”
This was my ah-ha moment.
"Holy crap! I’ve been this way my whole life. How did I not notice that until just now? I’m 27 years old.” I immediately called my mom to tell her the news.
“I know that." she said to me. "You’ve been this way forever. I really think you should get tested for ADHD.”
"What?!? I thought that wasn’t real. No. I’m not going to be lumped in with the group of people who just hype up ADHD so that they don’t have to be an actual parent to their kids."
“Wait," I tell myself (because I talk to myself, like crazy people do). "But I’m an adult. I don’t even live at home… I sure HOPE my mom isn’t trying to drug me so she doesn’t have to discipline me, 😝!"
Hm. What the heck. Maybe I’ll get tested just to see what happens. Yolo. My friends HAVE always joked about me being “So ADD…”
“You have one of the most severe cases of ADHD we’ve seen in awhile. It’s like depression or anxiety. You can have anywhere from mild to severe case. Yours is definitely really bad.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up, doc.
So you’re saying ADHD is real… and I’m an adult… and adults can have it too?
After hearing this diagnosis, I just HAD to find out the truth, and more about this “ADHD” thing.
I dove deep into reading everything I could about women with ADHD (yes, I can focus enough to read a book, especially if it’s a topic that interests me).
Some days, however, no matter how hard I try, it’s just not going to happen (and that’s where people get confused, but that’s for another post, or the comments section if you have questions).
Whatever’s supposed to be working in my brain, just isn’t gonna show up for work that day.
And I just have to deal with the fact that on that day, I won’t be able to read a book. Or write an intelligent steemit post.
I’ve learned to not talk down to myself because of it (ok, I’m still working on that one). I just tell myself, okay… so this is the day your mental power obviously took a vacation. So, clean the house, or shop for groceries instead.
And that arrangement works out pretty well, until I realize it’s been 2 weeks in a row and that mental focus power STILL is vacation, and it’s turned off it’s phone signal…
...so no matter how much I call it to tell it to come back from vacuum, the call always goes straight to voicemail.
When I fall so far behind on just little daily tasks, I lose hope. I sometimes give up thinking I have any reason to try. Why try when I already know this is how it's going to end for me:
So why bother? That's how I feel on the hopeless days. There are many. And I have to constantly fight to keep those thoughts at bay. It's a daily battle.
A lot of people think ADHD is just hyperactivity and inability to focus. But it's so much more than that. It's the disorder of contradiction.
I’m extremely go-with-the-flow. I can adapt plans and be carefree. This is one of the beautiful characteristics of ADHD.
Yet, I’m constantly anxious on the inside, which makes me very rigid. I can’t have something interrupt me, because if it does, I will surely drown in a sea of overwhelm and die.
I’m the most indecisive person you’ll ever meet. I’ll spend 3 straight days analyzing which
Airbnb I should stay in. Literally, 8 hours a day, just spent looking at my options. For a freaking. AirBnb. Omg. Pull my hair out.
Yet I’ll make decisions impulsively without thinking twice.
I’ll see someone with a successful e-commerce store on instagram, and I’ll start building my own THAT very instant, because if they can do it, I can too.
I’ll see it, and instantly I decide it’s what I want. In 13 hours, I’ll have a website up, and 140 instagram followers. Now, that is focus.
I’ll have 5k followers in less than 2 weeks. 15k in a couple of months. Nothing can stop me (except my inability to focus, in which I’ll start 20 other projects and let the ecommerce site die).
“Wait, 
@nomadicsoul. You focused for 13 straight hours, and built a website, yet it’ll ultimately fail due to your lack of focus??”
Ironic, isn’t it?
I’ll decide that being a Spanish teacher isn’t for me, so I’ll quit my job and buy a plane ticket to Europe that same day, only to realize it’s winter there and I don’t actually HAVE any winter clothes.
I’ll figure things out along the way, though. If I need a job, maybe I’ll get one in Europe. Maybe I won’t. I don’t need to plan. I’ll just see where the wind blows me.
Yet, I overplan. I will research dry season vs. rainy season, best months in which country, packing bug spray in case they don’t have it where I’m traveling, etc. etc. I’ll research for 3 straight weeks.
I’ll dive deep. I’ll turn something simple into something complicated. And then, I’ll get overwhelmed and abandon the plan altogether.
I don’t move a lot, because I sit still, working at a computer all day, yet I’m hyperactive. My mind moves faster than lightning. You couldn’t keep up with the speed of my thoughts if you tried.
Which means sometimes I don’t express myself well, because I’m thinking too fast, or too many thoughts at once. So, I end up skipping around and forgetting to give others context.
Yet, I express myself very well and make friends easily because I’m such a talker, but I can also listen.
It took me 7 hours to do my homework every night when I was just 10 years old. Most other kids got to play outside. Not me. I had to work incredibly hard to finish in 7 hours what my brother, who had the same teacher as me, would finish in 20 minutes.
Yet, we both got the same grades. We were both A students. Both smart.
I’ll feel smart because of my grades, but dumb because it took me so long to complete the work.
Smart because I graduated college with honors.
Smart because of my creative genius ideas that are sometimes out of this world.
Smart because I created my own product based off of a gap in the market that NO one else was filling. Smart because I was able to analyze the holes in other people’s offers, and then beat them out on their own weaknesses.
Then I'll feel dumb because I forget to order inventory and then just let the whole thing fail.
Then I'll feel dumb because I couldn’t find my car one day, and spent 45 minutes looking for it, only to realize that I forgot it wasn’t even at my apartment complex. It was at a grocery store TEN minutes away!!! How did I get home without a car?
I'll feel dumb because this happened:
Dumb because I went to a job interview barefoot! I forgo to put shoes and socks on because I was SO focused on not forgetting to bring my resume.
Smart because they offered me the job anyways.
Dumb because I rejected it even though it was a good opportunity. But the thought of being tied down suddenly made me nervous.
I’m the most ambitious, hard-working person you’ll ever meet. I’ll come up with, no exaggeration, 15 new business ideas in 20 minutes. I’ll want to do all of them!
But then I’m so overwhelmed by the overflow of ideas in my head, that I can’t figure out where to start first. I become paralyzed, and end up not working at all as a result. Then, I’m instantly the laziest person you’ll ever meet, because the overhwlemed paralyzed me the way a spider paralyzes it’s victims that are stuck in its web.
I’m stuck in my own web that I created. A lot of people with ADHD are actually very intelligent but get low grades in school. As adults, our intelligence and creativty can get trapped inside our brains with no way to escape. Our brain are our own jail cell.
Adhd, the disorder of contradictions. You never know what to expect with someone with ADHD (which keeps life from getting boring).
I'm open-minded, can see things from multiple persepctives, yet I'm strongly opinionated.
I'm quick to seek understanding, yet quick to get defensive.
I'm confident, yet have low self esteem. It's normal for that to happen because when you end up with so many unfinished projects, typically ADHDers can get pretty down. Yet, they'll feel confident enough to go at it again soon enough!
I'm highly motivated and simulatenously unmotivated, by my overwhelming motivation.
(A girl next on the plane ironically just asked me how much longer I’ll work. Which is funny because I just wrote about how it takes me so much longer to work than other people).
Answer to her in my head: If I was normal, this article would’ve been finished 4 days ago. But, I’m ADHD, sooo I’ll probably be writing this for 7 more days. I’ll be finished in a week. Or, if my brain is flowing for once, which it is, I’ll probably have this written within 4 hours. So the rest of this flight. Sorry. But you don’t understand how very little this ability to “flow” and “focus” comes. I’d say maybe only 1-2 times a month, if I’m lucky. So, you can take a nap either in 7 days or 4 hours when I finish. Face palm. I ended up switching seats with someone so as not to annoy her. But, if I don’t finish this now… this post will end up in a pile of unfinished projects that I have sitting in the corner)
I don’t really tell people about my struggles with ADHD because...
...it’s embarrassing, and because I don’t want to get judged.
Everyone has their opinion and they want to give it. They might tell me it’s not real, or I should “try harder.” Sometimes, I’m just too exhausted to deal with the “Try harder” or “change your attitude” type feedback.
When the reality is I try harder more than anyone could possibly ever imagine or know. I spent 7 hours doing the homework that it took my brother 20 minutes to do, remember?
And honestly, that’s not the solution, anyway. My brain doesn’t get enough dopamine, among other complicated scientific things that I won’t bore you with.
But telling a person with ADHD to “try harder” is the equivalent to telling a deaf person to try harder to hear something. Not gonna happen.
So I just keep it to myself. I’m barely hanging on as it is.
I’m only telling you all of this because I was inspired by the contest by indigoocean. I don’t know how steemit does it, but these contests just squeeze my inner secrets out of me.
I just couldn’t resist the fact that every single day I am more aware than I would ever like to be of the fact that I’m a walking contradiction.
And honestly, maybe it just feels good to have an excuse to be “allowed” to talk about my struggles for once without feeling like I’m burdening someone. Or bringing them down. Or complaining.
Because complaining does no good, and gets you nowhere in life. Yet, if you read Dale Carnegie, you’ll know that it’s a basic human need to be understood. People want to feel heard, understood, and appreciated.
And that’s true. I mean, aren’t we all here on steemit writing our thoughts and opinions every day? Just waiting for someone to hear us?
Aren’t we CRUSHED when all we get in response is crickets? Forget the upvote, can somebody just say they liked my article please?!? I’ll give you cookie.🍪 🍪
And doesn’t a well-thought out comment just make you feel like you’ve unwrapped the best birthday present in the world? 🎁 🎁
That’s why. We all want to feel heard, understood, and appreciated. So, off topic a little, but remember that when you want to succeed on steemit. Start by making people feel this way.
Start by caring about others more than yourself.
Yet, even though I fully believe this, I often interrupt others because I have SO many thoughts in my head, that I’m afraid I’ll lose them and then I end up looking “unintelligent” again.
Sometimes, by the time someone is finished talking, I’ll just have this blank stare with nothing to say back to them, or with nothing intelligent to add to the conversation.
And it’s not because I’m trying to be rude. It’s just that, I can only really hold on to one or two thoughts at MOST, so if you talk to me about something for even 5 minutes, I’m probably going to have to take notes on what you’re saying to keep from interrupting you.
That’s for real. I even interrupt myself, sometimes, because my own thoughts are coming at ME so fast.
I end up being seen as rude, when my intention was never that. It was to be able to respond thoughtfully to the person’s comment.
The questions that bombard you every day that you live with ADHD are overwhelming.
I guess you could say they even lead to a minor identity crisis.
“Am I dumb or am I smart?”
“Am I talented or incompetent?”
"Am I laid-back and go with the flow, or am I hyper-excitable?"
"Do I crave stability or adventure?"
“Why did someone call me creative this day, but lazy the next day?”
“Am I trustworthy or irresponsible?”
“Am I a hard worker or unmovitated?"
"Do I love constant change or do I hate it?"
The pieces of the puzzle don’t fit. I’m a walking enigma. I confuse myself, and others. I’m unpredictable. I'm consistently inconsistent
But I’m learning to accept the enigmas and love the contradicting sides of myself. I’m learning not to shove my own judgmental opinion down my throat. I’m learning to allow just accept the fact that some days I won’t be productive, but that it’s okay. It doesn’t mean my value as a person has gone down.
I’m learning to be patient with my own weaknesses. I’m learning to grow and become a better person, despite all of these obstacles.
It’s one small step at a time. But it’s my journey. And I’m walking my own contradictory path until I get there, wherever that may be.