ADHD and Me
I’ve been struggling lately. Not so much with food or eating disorder things. More with life in general. Like I am a step behind in everything I need and want to do, without any tangible obstacles in my way, and I still cant seem to get them done.
From keeping my classroom organized, to tidying my condo, to writing this blog post. I NEVER seem to be able to carry out the act of completing any of these things until some external pressure has me backed into a corner (like parent-teacher interviews forcing me to organize my teaching desk).
It’s making me feel as if I am wasting precious time, the very thing that motivated me so strongly to overcome my eating disorder’s compulsions and routines.
Now I have this extra energy and unscheduled time, and instead of using it to the fullest, I still feel stuck to something. And not just one thing, but a thousand little things, pulling me in a thousand different directions ultimately keeping me stuck in one place, vibrating awkwardly rather than making any actual strides.
These feelings are NOT new. Its just without all the eating disorder struggles consuming most of my brainspace, they have taken up more prominent residence in my life.
It’s not just that I feel unproductive. Yeah, it’s annoying that my room is messier than I want it to be, that I can’t seem to remember where I put a giftcard I was gifted for the life of me, that this blog post I started a month ago I still haven’t finished.
But it’s impacting the way other people see me, and the way I see myself.
Take Superbowl weekend. We decided to throw a little party at my parents’ house, inviting my siblings and a few friends to watch the game half time show and eat lots of food. I decided to try to recreate the quinoa onion rings from Fresh, knowing how obsessed my boyfriend is with them, and also helped prepare a Tex Mex feast of nachos, enchiladas and BYO burrito bowls.
There was a bunch of us in the kitchen working with and around each other, navigating counter space and cutting boards, commandeering the SONOS speakers, trying to time everything so that it was all piping hot and ready to go for the start of the game.
Of course, in typical Prosen-family-style, the food was ready just seconds before Rhianna strode onto the stage at half time. But pretty much all of us only cared to see that part of the game anyways. So perfect timing!
I plated the onion rings, from their paper towel lined drinking dish onto something more serving worthy, quickly ran a cloth over the counter, rushed to put some spice bottles away and dashed downstairs.
I felt like I was being pulled so many ways-- my siblings and boyfriend downstairs, waiting for me to join them, my aunts attempting to navigate the kitchen and also wanting to catch up with me, and my pole standing there in the middle of it all, staring me down for not having used it all day, despite that being one of the first things on my to do list.
But I was able to exhale, with that final onion ring scooped onto the platter. It was halftime, dinner was done, and we could all be downstairs to eat and enjoy together. I had even managed to sneak in a couple ayeshas as things were cooking.
It was only the next day I was subjected to a different perspective. According to my mother, I dashed downstairs without a glance behind me, leaving a whirlwind of greasy surfaces, unwashed dishes, and dirty floors in my wake. She was genuinely hurt by it, feeling like I had intentionally thought to assign her the task of cleaner.
It’s so selfish, when you do these things. Like you just expect other people to clean up after you. As if its only your time and what you have to do that matters and not mine.
And that devastated me. Was I really that selfish?
It did cross my mind that I should tidy up my mess-- thats why I wiped the counter and put away the things I used. But did I think to check the floors, or the other areas of the kitchen? Maybe for a second. But I was really just consumed by this urgency to get out of there as fast as I could with the food so that it could be enjoyed by everyone while it was hot and at its best. It didn’t even cross my mind at that moment what the state of the rest of the kitchen was in, or when it would be addressed.
Its not the first time I’ve been called out for my whirling dervish messiness. My first house I shared with roommates, I was horrified the first time my friend sat down with me and gently broke it to me that I was “messy.”
I thought I was being so careful to clean up after myself, everytime I used any kind of common area. My students at school have even asked me what my desk is “such a mess.” And it’s really only at that moment I see my stacks of papers and notebooks as a mess and not in tentatively organized stacks of “to-do nows” and “to-do-laters.”
I’m struggling with this because its more than just being a “messy” person. It’s more that the mess is a symptom of a greater, underlying issue: attention and hyperfixation.
An issue I am only beginning to wrap my head around. I was actually diagnosed with ADD (now categorized as ADHD on the DH-5 scale) when I was in grade 4 when my teacher noticed my difficulty in transitioning from task to task.
However, I managed to do well in school, and I was not bouncing off walls the way most people assumes people (boys) with ADHD tend to behave, so no one gave much thought to this diagnosis: not any doctor, my parents, and not me.
It was only recently, as I have gotten to know more people living with ADHD, that I have come to understand some of the myths and misconceptions that exist around it.
As one a video by How to ADHD put it, ADHD is less of an inability to pay attention and more of an imbalance of attention.
It’s not that I, like other “ADHDers” cannot focus on anything. It’s that we have difficulty training our attention on something that is not giving us an immediate hit of dopamine to our apparently, under-dopaminated cortexes.
My lack of ability to tidy and organize spaces is because my brain is so heavily fixated on something else, whether its a pole class I am about to run out the door for, an upcoming trip I am planning, and less healthily, anxiety regarding some eating disorder thought permeating.
That one fixation consumes all my attention, appearing in screaming colour, with all other tasks and thoughts muted and black and white in the background.
I don’t like living this way, at the mercy of whatever thought is giving me that hit of dopamine, limiting my ability to comprehend and act in a way that acknowledges the big picture of whats going on around me.
So I am taking steps to figure out how to function with this ADHD that I am finially acknowledging.
I could write so much more about what I am already learning, but this blog post is long enough. Hopefully, I will manage to have trained my attention to write more posts on this ADHD discovery journey as I go.
Have you ever suspected you might have ADHD? Have you ever held any of the same beliefs I did about how it manifests?
Stay tuned to see how this chaotic brain of mine is working to sort itself out.
Til next time,
Jae