What can I say...
4:34:00 AM |
| camera is Michael's, so's the photography. |
When I was little, my family and I would love watching the show Everybody Loves Raymond. There's this one episode, where Raymond writes a eulogy for his (living) tough-guy father, as a "writing exercise" because he's a professional writer. There was this running gag where everyone wanted or was writing each other's eulogies wanting to hear what others would say about them, and each eulogy started with "what can I say about [insert name]?"
Honestly, I have no idea how I want this to sound or where exactly I should start. There's just so much that I feel I need to explain, mainly to myself, but also for the select few who love me enough to happen across this.
I officially found out that I have ADHD about 3 weeks ago. I've suspected and wondered if I had it for about 3 years. Three years of doubting and wondering. I think most people who read this will be surprised by it... probably because I've always tried to hide my issues from everyone, even those closes to me. But also probably because people don't expect ADHD in girls and also think that hyperactivity is a necessary trait for ADHD.
"Only 1 percent of ADHD research is focused on the disorder in females."*
It's one of the main traits, definitely, but the other main trait is the AD part: Attention Deficit aka Inattention. That's mainly what I am. Almost every article on the Inattentive side of ADHD will describe us as the "space cadets." The slightly "ditzy" kids in class who look like they're living in another dimension. Their personal belongings seem to have a knack for floating off into oblivion and they're almost always late to something because they got "caught up" in something or lose track of time. They're the kids still working on their math problems completely oblivious to the fact that the rest of the class has moved onto reading.
"Girls with ADHD are 3 times more likely to be treated for a mood disorder before receiving their ADHD diagnosis.
One-third of women with ADHD have anxiety disorders, and almost half of those have considered suicide."
Before I was diagnosed with ADHD I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. I'm not saying I don't have those things, but it took so long to get to the heart of the problem. When I received my official diagnosis, they showed me the analysis of my test results, and I was finally able to understand and have an explanation for this invisible monster that I always felt like I was fighting. But it was also like discovering that I'd been partially blind my entire life, and the world actually looks completely different from what I thought it did. And the reason why I kept running into walls all the time wasn't because I was just a clumsy person. It was because I couldn't see as well as everyone else could. And the only treatments that could help me catch up in life, were to take a pill that would allow me to see for a few hours at a time and try to learn ways to not run into things when I can't see them.
Before I was diagnosed with ADHD I was diagnosed with severe anxiety and depression. I'm not saying I don't have those things, but it took so long to get to the heart of the problem. When I received my official diagnosis, they showed me the analysis of my test results, and I was finally able to understand and have an explanation for this invisible monster that I always felt like I was fighting. But it was also like discovering that I'd been partially blind my entire life, and the world actually looks completely different from what I thought it did. And the reason why I kept running into walls all the time wasn't because I was just a clumsy person. It was because I couldn't see as well as everyone else could. And the only treatments that could help me catch up in life, were to take a pill that would allow me to see for a few hours at a time and try to learn ways to not run into things when I can't see them.
I've cycled through pretty much all of the levels of the diagnosis grief cycle so far, except I haven't stopped cycling. Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance, Denial, Bargaining, Depression, Anger, Denial, Depression, Acceptance... I just keep going. And I'm trying to find a resting place for myself. I'm hoping to write a post for each of those 5 emotions. This is actually the fourth, maybe fifth, time I'm writing this post. At least 3 of them start of with the words "I don't know..." and one of them was a gigantic pity party (yes, even bigger than this one) that I won't do anyone the dishonor of posting.
But what can I say about Mia?
What can I say about the 22 years of life that I've lived not knowing that I had ADHD? What can I say about that person and that world that in some ways never really existed? I know that may sound dramatic to most people. But it's hard to explain just how much ADHD is a part of your life. ADHD isn't something that just exists in a classroom and effects your grades. My ADHD diagnosis gave sense to all of the questions that I had about my life that I didn't think could be answered:
For 22 years I didn't know that there were answers to these questions. I didn't know or think about if they were normal or not. That was just the way life was. But as there were more and more things to focus on, my symptoms became more and more pronounced and harder to hide. When I read the first ADHD inattentive story, I cried because it felt like it was describing my own life. When I got my diagnosis, I cried because they told me I would need accommodations, therapy, and medication. I cried because I was angry at all of the lost time and possibilities. I cried because the person who I thought I was and could become was different now. But I also cried because I knew that there was something that could help, that I didn't have to live believing I was useless.
People always say that ADHD is like trying to watch a television when someone else has the remote. And in a lot of ways I think they're right; but I feel like it's a little more complicated than that.
* I would just like to remind everyone that I'm not a doctor, and I am very aware of that. These explanations are my attempts to explain my ADHD with my own perspectives, my own experience, and limited knowledge.
It's as if everyone's brain was one of those surveillance rooms with a gigantic grid of TVs, and every time you learn something new, you add a TV to the grid. To navigate and control this room you have a processing unit that operates a bit like Siri or OK Google. When you tell the unit what you want to focus on, it will select that TV to focus on and then light up the most related TVs containing the information you need.
I'd say ADHD is like this except with really shitty voice recognition that has about 55% accuracy and next-to zero search engine optimization. You tell it what you want and just pray that it picks the right one, and when it does, it also lights up 2 others and every other TV-screen within the 2nd, 3rd and 4th degree of relation to those.
It's not that we aren't paying attention, it's that our brains are trying to pay attention to everything at the same time. I think it's as if brains are like cameras (here's to all you photographers out there). All brains are taking pictures continuously but the aperture and shutter speed will determine how many photos and how much information we get.
Neurotypical brains have the ability to adjust their aperture and shutter speed to be able to get the optimum focus on the subject they need. They will take in fewer pictures and less information, so they are able to look at each photo and get the information they need from them quickly for the present moment. But a few years later when their brain auto-deletes some of the photos they took, if you ask them about the details of the subject in those photos, they'll have a harder time recalling them because they didn't have those details in focus.
ADHD brains are like cameras with sticky mechanics. So, most of the time we have everything constantly in focus, which means our shutter speed is faster and we're taking in more pictures and more information per second as compared to a neurotypical brain. So if we're trying to get the information we need right now, it's so hard because we have so many more pictures and so much information to process in them. So to go through to get the specific information we need right now will take significantly more time and effort. But ask us a few years later about the details in those photos and we'll be able to recall them with ease, because chances are we've kept at least one of those photos that has allllll the details in it.
I feel like people get the idea that ADHD brains operate the exact same way that theirs does except that we just get distracted by squirrels/shiny things and we have less memory space. But the reality is my memory is fine, better than most even. It's just that the way that we are able to see the world is fundamentally different.
What can I say about the 22 years of life that I've lived not knowing that I had ADHD? What can I say about that person and that world that in some ways never really existed? I know that may sound dramatic to most people. But it's hard to explain just how much ADHD is a part of your life. ADHD isn't something that just exists in a classroom and effects your grades. My ADHD diagnosis gave sense to all of the questions that I had about my life that I didn't think could be answered:
- Why I so strongly remember feeling frustrated, in 2nd grade, because I would whiz through all of the difficult tasks and be the first one to finish, and yet have to watch my classmates pass me by because I couldn't finish something as simple as cutting nouns out of a newspaper.
- Why I started shaving my entire body in 3rd grade because the feeling of my own body hair. "bothered me" so much that I couldn't think about anything else.
- Why I always found it easier to befriend boys and struggled to deepen friendships with girls.
- Why I've never been able fall asleep at night in less than 3 hours.
- Why I will actually sob in despair if I am woken up right as I'm falling asleep because I know I might not be able to do it again.
- Why my nighttime routine:
- - requires me to be freshly showered even if I may have showered earlier in the day
- - requires me to get in and out of bed an average of 6 times a night because, in the process of waiting to fall asleep, I might be too thirsty and need water, but then need to go to the bathroom, be too hungry and eat but need to brush my teeth... repeat.
- - will usually require me to remove every piece of clothing I may have on, because the sensation of the cloth against my bed and blanket are too distracting, or sometimes shave or cut my nails for the same reason.
- - requires me to occupy my mind with the same bland shows or audio books because otherwise my own mind might terrorize me with the imagination of the detailed deaths of myself or my loved ones.
- Why my childish fears only seemed to grow stronger as I got older.
- Why writing two sentences of an essay would take 2 hours because I would have to read articles 3 or 4 times because every time I went to write, I would forget what I wanted to write about.
- Why the tiniest most insignificant things, like a stuck seatbelt or an untied shoe, can make me cry and want to scream.
- Why I spend sometimes hours of frustration feeling like I can't find my memories even if I know I have them.
- Why I somehow make the strangest and idiotic mistakes.
- Why I would fail even the easiest classes, because I would forget assignments, forget the class existed, forget to take an exam, do a project entirely wrong and be too embarrassed to present/submit it, or miss half or all of the class because I would miss the bus or be late, and then not be able to have the courage to walk into the classroom
- Why I sometimes sit and feel like I'm doing everything, and then sit back hours later realizing I've done nothing.
- Why I can take the most involved and perfect notes in class and not remember a thing that happened.
- Why I can't participate in class discussions, not because I'm afraid to speak or that I have no thoughts, but because I can't remember what they said and what I want to say at the same time.
- Why I could never seem to speak the thoughts in my head.
- Why my inability to function in cities causes my anxiety rather than the other way around.
- Why I can want to do something, know how to do it, and why I should do it. And somehow not be able to.
- Why I feel like I'm trapped by my own head, by my own body.
For 22 years I didn't know that there were answers to these questions. I didn't know or think about if they were normal or not. That was just the way life was. But as there were more and more things to focus on, my symptoms became more and more pronounced and harder to hide. When I read the first ADHD inattentive story, I cried because it felt like it was describing my own life. When I got my diagnosis, I cried because they told me I would need accommodations, therapy, and medication. I cried because I was angry at all of the lost time and possibilities. I cried because the person who I thought I was and could become was different now. But I also cried because I knew that there was something that could help, that I didn't have to live believing I was useless.
People always say that ADHD is like trying to watch a television when someone else has the remote. And in a lot of ways I think they're right; but I feel like it's a little more complicated than that.
* I would just like to remind everyone that I'm not a doctor, and I am very aware of that. These explanations are my attempts to explain my ADHD with my own perspectives, my own experience, and limited knowledge.
It's as if everyone's brain was one of those surveillance rooms with a gigantic grid of TVs, and every time you learn something new, you add a TV to the grid. To navigate and control this room you have a processing unit that operates a bit like Siri or OK Google. When you tell the unit what you want to focus on, it will select that TV to focus on and then light up the most related TVs containing the information you need.
I'd say ADHD is like this except with really shitty voice recognition that has about 55% accuracy and next-to zero search engine optimization. You tell it what you want and just pray that it picks the right one, and when it does, it also lights up 2 others and every other TV-screen within the 2nd, 3rd and 4th degree of relation to those.
It's not that we aren't paying attention, it's that our brains are trying to pay attention to everything at the same time. I think it's as if brains are like cameras (here's to all you photographers out there). All brains are taking pictures continuously but the aperture and shutter speed will determine how many photos and how much information we get.
Neurotypical brains have the ability to adjust their aperture and shutter speed to be able to get the optimum focus on the subject they need. They will take in fewer pictures and less information, so they are able to look at each photo and get the information they need from them quickly for the present moment. But a few years later when their brain auto-deletes some of the photos they took, if you ask them about the details of the subject in those photos, they'll have a harder time recalling them because they didn't have those details in focus.
ADHD brains are like cameras with sticky mechanics. So, most of the time we have everything constantly in focus, which means our shutter speed is faster and we're taking in more pictures and more information per second as compared to a neurotypical brain. So if we're trying to get the information we need right now, it's so hard because we have so many more pictures and so much information to process in them. So to go through to get the specific information we need right now will take significantly more time and effort. But ask us a few years later about the details in those photos and we'll be able to recall them with ease, because chances are we've kept at least one of those photos that has allllll the details in it.
I feel like people get the idea that ADHD brains operate the exact same way that theirs does except that we just get distracted by squirrels/shiny things and we have less memory space. But the reality is my memory is fine, better than most even. It's just that the way that we are able to see the world is fundamentally different.
A video on ADHD if you've got 30 minutes lying around...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouZrZa5pLXk&feature=youtu.be
*https://www.additudemag.com/the-statistics-of-adhd/
https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/what-undiagnosed-adhd-feels-like/
https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-symptoms-in-women/
https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-in-adults-acceptance-late-diagnosis/?src=embed_link
https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/adhd-in-girls-women/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouZrZa5pLXk&feature=youtu.be
*https://www.additudemag.com/the-statistics-of-adhd/
https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/what-undiagnosed-adhd-feels-like/
https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-symptoms-in-women/
https://www.additudemag.com/adhd-in-adults-acceptance-late-diagnosis/?src=embed_link
https://www.additudemag.com/slideshows/adhd-in-girls-women/
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