I’m Not Broken, I Have ADHD

When my neurologist asked me if I’d ever been screened for ADHD, I was a bit caught off guard. Not just because I was at the neurologist to be seen for chronic fatigue, brain fog, and short-term memory issues—and what did that have to do with ADHD—but, because there was no way. I would know if I had ADHD, right? I mean, I was in my thirties already. I would definitely know.

Except, I didn’t.

After filling out a brief questionnaire, the neurologist encouraged me to do some research of my own and get in touch with my primary care doctor to see about getting evaluated. Despite my reservations—of which there were many—I did as suggested and spent some time googling ADHD when I got home that day. And, let me tell you, I was shocked by what I found.

I always thought ADHD was that one kid at the back of the classroom. The rowdy one who couldn’t stay in his seat, was constantly moving, and always got in trouble for talking. And, okay, so I may have gotten in trouble for talking one or one hundred times, but I never had trouble staying in my seat and I wasn’t exactly what you’d consider rowdy.

As it turns out, that is only a very small piece of what ADHD is. This discovery was about to send me down a rabbit hole I, ironically enough, only later identified as a hyperfixation. Another ADHD symptom I had no idea existed.

When most people think of ADHD, they picture a very stereotypical—and narrow—view of it. Specifically, Hyperactive ADHD.  That’s the whole ‘can’t sit still, can’t focus, impulsive behavior’ piece of it. You know, the kind of behavior you see people on Facebook parenting groups talking about. Maybe if Little Johnny had more recess time and less red dye 40—or whatever it is they’re blaming this week—then he would stop disrupting class every five minutes. And it’s that element—the disruption—that makes this particular type of ADHD so easy to spot, evaluate, and subsequently diagnose.

It’s also the reason ADHD has a much higher diagnostic rate in boys than in girls. Boys most often present in that very “classic” hyperactive profile of ADHD, but it can look much different for girls—like me.

I had no issues staying in my desk at school. For all intents and purposes, I looked like the model student. I could be quiet and still, looking for all the world like I was deeply absorbed in whatever the teacher was saying…while not hearing a single word of it. Nothing about my outward behavior pinged anyone’s ADHD radar. And why would it? Which is why my parents and teachers alike were always so confused when I would continuously struggle with my school work.

It was difficult and embarrassing to try and explain that just because it appeared as though I was paying attention, didn’t mean I was. The inside of my brain was a constant flurry of errant thoughts competing for my attention, my head buzzing incessantly, drowning out the world around me.

My experience, and that of a lot of other girls, is more closely associated with the Inattentive type of ADHD. Easily missed and drastically underdiagnosed. It’s been far too easily brushed off as “typical girl behavior”. Little girls are supposed to be chatty and social and daydream, right? (There is much more I could say about that, but that will have to be a soapbox for another day).

When I was finally diagnosed, I was classified as Combined Type ADHD, which is pretty much what it sounds like. It’s the unholy love child of Hyperactive and Inattentive ADHD, in which someone presents with both kinds of traits. But, the more research I did into the topic, the more I realized just how much nuance there is under the umbrella of ADHD.

My brain raced with each discovery. It was like collecting pieces to a puzzle I didn’t know I’d been putting together my whole life. As the image slowly came together, it started to sink in. It absolutely was possible to have ADHD and be unaware for thirty years. In fact, it happens far too often.

Things I hated about myself my whole life, things that made me feel weird or broken or other were because of my undiagnosed ADHD. Let’s spiral down this rabbit hole together, shall we?

Things Pre-“ADHD Knowledge-Having” Jess Hated About Herself:

1.     I was constantly losing or misplacing things.

Everything was at risk, and nothing was exempt. I would lose everything from school assignments, to toys, clothing, dishes, and even our house key. I cannot tell you the amount of times I found myself locked out of the house after school because I’d misplaced my key…again. I would be forced to either wait outside until someone else came home or walk to a neighbor to use their phone and call my parents.

It was incredibly inconvenient and deeply humiliating. I wasn’t trying to be careless. On more than one occasion as I sat outside huddled against the rain or snow, I wondered what was so wrong with me that I could continue to misplace something so important. Looking back now, I’m sure it can be at least partially attributed to the Chasm of Doom, otherwise known as my bedroom. It was, historically, a place things entered but never seemed to reappear from.

Which brings me to my next topic of self-hatred.

2.     I was messy.

‘Aw, but Jess,’ You might think, ‘kids are messy. It’s just how it is!’ You, dear reader, would be correct. Kids are basically walking disasters with sticky hands and adorable smiles. That’s not the kind of mess I’m talking about though.

When I was in sixth grade, my teacher called me out in front of the whole class to tell me I wouldn’t be watching a movie today like everyone else, and instead I needed to go clean out my black hole of a locker that had inexplicably eaten two textbooks.

I was the only one to miss the movie. And sadly, this “my locker has now been re-classified as a dumpster” cleaning endeavor was not a one-time event.

When I was in high school, I avoided having sleepovers at my house because my room was basically a biohazard. It was so bad that at one point I had to jump from the hallway to my bed because the floor wasn’t even visible. One time, I recovered a dish that at one point must have been used to house a dairy product of some kind, because the rotten stench of old milk was the only reason it was eventually located under my bed.

You’re probably thinking, at least on some level, that I was a disgusting human being. Child or no. And, you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong—everything I’ve described here is, objectively, disgusting. But it isn’t like I wanted to be this way or was unaware of how bad things were. In fact, I was very much aware, and deeply ashamed. I wanted to be one of those girls with the spotless, color coordinated bedroom that smelled of cucumber melon Bath and Body Works spray and had enough room to learn the dance moves from the latest *NSYNC music video. I wanted to be able to find my assignments and textbooks in my locker without having to sift through a dozen moldy water bottles, stale half-eaten Pop Tarts, or a whole season’s worth of old gym clothes just to find them. At the very least, I wanted to have my friends sleep over and not risk them slipping on some mystery substance leaking out of an old Tupperware container half-open on the floor.

And yet, there I was.

Sure, my friends had messy rooms. Clothes scattered about, a book on the ground here or there, a few water glasses abandoned on their nightstands, eyeshadow dust and a drip of nail polish on their dressers. It was amateur level messy and always managed to get cleaned up in a somewhat timely manner with some parental influence. My friends would spend an hour or so and clean their rooms, and that would be that.

I, however, was playing in the big leagues. Professional level mess maker and skilled avoider. My parents could beg, bribe, or threaten me, but I just…couldn’t. Oh, I was physically capable. But no matter how hard I tried or how ashamed I was, actually doing it was an impossible task for me.

I remember on more than one occasion just sitting on my bed in tears because I didn’t understand why I couldn’t seem to do it. ‘It’s not hard,’ I’d tell myself. ‘Just get up and clean your room.’ This argument would swirl around in my head for hours, my own voice growing meaner and more degrading the longer it went on. I would call myself names, like lazy and useless. I had to be, right? I mean, I couldn’t do this one simple thing that everyone else seemed to be able to do. Obviously, there was something wrong with me.

3.     I would often space out.

It wasn’t only my inability to make myself to basic tasks like picking up my room that made me feel defective or broken. I also seemed wholly incapable of focusing any singular thing for any real length of time. Often, I would find myself spacing out randomly during the day, even when someone was talking directly to me. I would try so hard to focus on what they were saying, repeating things back in my head, but it didn’t always work. More often than not, I would find my mind racing away with an endless queue of unrelated nonsense.

My gym teacher would blow the whistle to start a game of soccer, and I would be wondering if that bird in the tree next to the field knew it was Monday. Did they have a bird job to go to? Or school? Did they visit their bird friends on the weekends?

On more than one occasion, my musings were cut short by a ball of some sort crashing into one part of my body or another. Zoning out was how I managed to take a basketball to the head in freshman year and a softball to the throat in my junior year. Athletics hate me in general, but my inability to pay attention certainly didn’t help. It’s really a wonder why no one wanted me to be the goalie in our summer rec department soccer league. Apparently, other people don’t think sitting between the cones picking grass while wondering about the social and professional lives of birds is a game-winning strategy. Who knew?

Not only did this tendency lead to bodily injury and severely affect my chances of ever playing professional soccer, but it had a huge impact on my social life as well. People always seemed to think I was purposefully ignoring them or tuning them out. I wanted to scream that it wasn’t true, that I was trying so hard to pay attention, that I genuinely wanted to know what they were trying to tell me…but I never did. After all, if I was trying so hard, why couldn’t I do it? Why could everyone else focus on what people were saying and I couldn’t? Even when it was something super juicy—like why the relationship goals couple in our grade just broke up—or when it was something important, such as when my cardiologist is trying to explain to me why a woman in her twenties needs to start wearing compression socks and stop drinking so much coffee.

Just another reason there must be something fundamentally wrong with me.

4.     My terrible memory

‘What did you say your name was again?’ I ask with a practiced smile, face red, internally combusting from shame. It was the third time I’d asked. Or, maybe the fourth. I couldn’t even remember that much. This time when they answer, it’s with a strained expression I’ve seen many times before.

Most people are pretty cool about it the first time you ask them to repeat their name. The second time is usually met with a bit of confusion. The third is when you really start to lose them. Unless their name is super uncommon or hard to pronounce, most people don’t need to hear a name half a dozen times before they’ll remember a dude named Jeff.

I always try to laugh off my terrible memory, but internally I’m screaming at myself for forgetting something again. I might say, “Oh, ha-ha, I’m terrible at names.” But my brain is going, WHY ARE YOU THIS WAY?

And names are just one example. I constantly missed assignments in school, I struggle to remember appointments and events, and I’ll often agree to do something only to turn around and totally forget about it.

It’s a good thing my husband is so patient with me, because the amount of times I’ve forgotten something I promised to do has to be reaching astronomical levels at this point. It could be something as simple as saying I’ll make a reservation for dinner, or something as big as saying I’ll take care of paying the car insurance. And, when I inevitably forget and something slips through the cracks, the cycle of shame starts all over.

I always make these promises with the best intentions. I couldn’t even tell you how many strategies I’ve tried over the years to help me remember things. Even writing it down is never a guarantee. These days, I have a calendar on my phone, a calendar on the fridge, one on my desk, a weekly planner, a daily planner, and a separate daily to-do list…and I will still forget something.

To others, it may seem like this is me being intensely organized and put-together, so it doesn’t compute to them that I still struggle to hold my life together. And, it’s only because of this rigid organization I’ve developed—along with deep seated fear and crippling anxiety—that I am able to remember anything at all.

Again, there has to be something wrong with me, because it’s not normal to have to put this much work into being able to function on a basic human level every day, right?

Fast forward through twenty some-odd years of shame and the resulting anxiety to me sitting at my kitchen counter, scrolling ADHD websites with tears running down my face. My whole life, I was convinced I was broken. I felt so alone and alienated. I struggled with so many things that seemed to come so easily to everyone else. But, here it was right in front of me. The disorganization, the inability to force myself to clean, the zoning out, forgetting things—they were all symptoms of ADHD.

Thinking back with this new lens, these weren’t the only signs of ADHD I displayed as a child, or the only ones I still struggle with today. (Yes. Still. Because getting a diagnosis and having information doesn’t magically make everything better—please let me know where I can file a Very Bitter Complaint about that). Everything from time blindness, to interrupting, to impulsive spending, to my tendency to fidget and overshare—all symptoms of ADHD.

Suddenly I had a name for the things I’ve struggled with my whole life. There were people out there like me who shared the same difficulties. We’re not broken. We’re just different. And we’re NOT alone.

I cried for the eight-year-old me who couldn’t clean her room. I cried for the eleven-year-old me who was singled out in class to go clean her locker. I cried for the fifteen-year-old me who was called lazy by a teacher for forgetting so many assignments. I cried for eighteen-year-old me who had just failed her driver’s test for the second time because she had trouble concentrating on so many things at once. I cried for twenty-one-year-old me who struggled so hard to learn to live independently. I cried for earlier-that-day me who put a mug of coffee in the microwave on the way to change over the laundry and then, several hours and a complete re-organization of the laundry room later, realized the towels were still in the washer and my son had finished my forgotten, likely ice-cold coffee (but man does my laundry room look fantastic).

I cried for the anxiety and depression I developed as an adult because of a missed diagnosis. Something that, in looking back, seems like it should have been so obvious.

I’ve often wondered since then what life could have been like if my ADHD had been identified earlier. Would I have learned skills to compensate for my shortcomings? Would I have learned to work with my ADHD rather than against it? Would I have a better understanding of myself and how my brain works?

Would I still be struggling with my perception of myself?

I suppose there is really no way to know, and dwelling on it won’t do me any good. It’s hard not to wonder though, what my life could have been like if I had gotten help sooner. Frankly, it feels pretty unfair and I’d like a do-over. Clearly if I had been armed with this information sooner I’d have finished writing my novel, become a wildly successful author, and I’d be writing this post from a luxury café drinking expensive, pleasantly hot coffee in clothes without stains…instead of writing it from my mostly-presentable home office with long-cold coffee and wearing a sweater covered in whatever mystery substance was coating my three-year-old’s hands.

I was officially diagnosed in February of 2021. I was thirty years old. Now, two years later, I am still learning—about ADHD and about myself. Though I’m medicated now, that doesn’t mean everything is shiny and bright. Finding the right medication was a struggle all on its own (honestly, “was” is a little optimistic—it’s quite a twisty journey, y’all), and even with the proper medication and dosage, there are still things I find difficult and I’ve found that some days are worse than others. I can often be found hunched over my coffee maker with a haggard and frenzied look in my eyes, meds running through my system, and I still can’t manage to remember how many scoops of grounds I already put in.

It’s a process, and it’s all about finding little tricks and ways of doing things that work for you. (In a future post, I’ll get into the many ways us ADHD-ers turn ourselves into mental pretzels to only semi-successfully trick out own brains into allowing us to unload the dishwasher before it happens as a natural consequence of using all the things inside while the sink overflows with the dishes waiting to go in, and then sound ridiculous—even to other neurospicy folks—when trying to explain that mental journey.)

One thing I’ve learned through this whole adventure, is that neurodivergency of any kind is an incredibly personal journey. Sure, we find community and things we share that make us all a part of the same special group. We find things in common that make us feel a little less alone. But each person’s journey and experience is unique to them.

Not everyone chooses to medicate, which is totally valid. Others, like myself, find that medication is the best way to help us overcome some of those daily struggles. And that is equally valid. Just like what tricks work for one person with ADHD may not work for another.

We all had different journeys to get to this diagnosis. Different times and points in our lives, different struggles and set-backs, different pathways to learning about ourselves. And I’m sure that each person reacted to the discovery in their own way.

It’s such a validating experience to be able to take all of the things I’ve been so ashamed of throughout my life and put a label on them. To know that I’m not alone and remind myself of that fact every time I find myself standing there feeling like an alien again. (Seriously, it happens a lot. I should just tattoo it on my forearm to remind myself daily, you are not alone). There’s a whole community out there that I can connect with and learn from.

Two years on and I’m still putting my pieces together. I don’t have it all figured out, and I’m sure I never will. But I’m learning. I’m taking steps to embrace myself in all my neurodivergent glory. And I think that’s pretty wonderful.