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The Lost Girls of ADHD
Getting diagnosed as an adult hasn’t been the relief I thought it would be
There are three cups perched on my windowsill, one half filled with ripening tea, the soy milk congealing and fluffy. I know it’s time to cart them to the dishwasher, I can smell the sweet-bitter scent of mold. I think about doing it. I will myself to do it. I want to do it. I’m… probably not going to do it.
It feels like being trapped under sandbags, or at least, that’s how I describe it to a friend. It’s like I’m taking out the garbage after a very long week, but the bag breaks, and I hate myself, so I just give up and sit down in the pile of garbage because I’m garbage too. It’s like my mind is an annoying kid sister prodding at my exhausted body, and my body keeps saying “Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off.”
I’ve wasted my life telling my mind to fuck off.
Being diagnosed with ADHD at 32 years old has not been the welcome relief that one Bustle article promised me. I think it’s a diagnosis trope, that we all come out the other side rejuvenated through this new knowledge, like naming the thing takes away its power.
But ADHD isn’t Rumpelstiltskin — even if it does feel like it’s trying to rob me of my future — and so my reaction involved, in no particular order, resentment, eating a…
