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 lot of chocolate, yelling at my parents, and grief. Lots and lots of grief.
I grieved for my childhood, my education, my relationships, my work, my family, my friendships, that class hamster I forgot to feed. I didn’t have a grip yet on what ADHD was exactly, but I knew that it came with effective treatments, ones that might have helped me in the past, when I needed them most, back when I was growing and learning and desperately trying to meet the expectations of everyone around me.
I wondered why no one recognized it, or suggested it, or took me to get help. That’s where the “yelling at my parents” came in.
When I was a kid, my mum’s screech could shatter glass when she saw the state of my bedroom. “It looks like a bomb hit it!” Through the lens of her strict Southern Baptist upbringing, my disorganization was a character flaw. I was the irresponsible layabout of the family, careless with my things. She didn’t…
