ADHD
The faint glow of my laptop illuminated my bloodshot eyes as they continued to dart to the corner of my screen to check the time. My fingers fly across the keyboard frantically typing stuff about the Apollo 11 moon landing that I had learned earlier that day. I've known about this research paper for weeks, yet here I am. It's 2 AM and I've procrastinated doing my homework until the last possible second yet again.
When I was in high school I procrastinated a lot.
In case you're wondering, I got a 92% on that paper, a feat so confusing I'm still not sure how I pulled it off to this day. It was a major paper for my AP US history class, and it's one of the first major events in my life that caused me to question how my brain works.
I didn't really understand what was happening, but something about a deadline caused my brain to kick into hyper-drive. Waiting till the last possible second is "where I do my best work", I'd tell people.
Chronic procrastination is one of the symptoms of ADHD.
I always had a song stuck in my head. When sitting for long periods of time I'd bounce my leg or flex my muscles to the beat of the song. Sometimes I would twitch my face or neck to the beat without even realizing I was doing it. My parents would catch me on more than one occasion asking what I was doing squinting my eyes or stretching my neck and I didn't have an answer for them.
Restlessness is one of the symptoms of ADHD.
I really liked playing games growing up. When playing a new game for the first time that I really enjoyed it would consume my every thought. I would play Terraria for 2 weeks straight and think about nothing else. At school I would think about how I could obtain that one staff, or how I could more efficiently set up a mob grinder. Then, just as quickly as it happened, I had already moved on to the next new thing. This wasn't exclusive to games. There was a period where I was really in to drawing with charcoal. I drew like 2 or 3 really good portraits and then never touched it again.
Hyper-fixation is one of the symptoms of ADHD.
I was laughably bad at remembering people's names. Once in karate we did an activity where we all had to write a 6 character license plate from memory onto the full body mirrors in the front of the room, and I was the only person who got it wrong. If I go the the grocery store for more than 3 items I have to write it down. I frequently walk into a room with purpose and forget why. When taking tests in school I would employ the "binge and purge" method. One time I learned all the cities for my geography test 8 minutes before I took the test. I got 100% and didn't remember a single thing. I set things down and forget where I put them daily.
Forgetfulness is one of the symptoms of ADHD.
I'd catch myself daydreaming often. When engaged in a conversation with someone, even if it was a topic I enjoyed, I would find myself thinking about a random tangent that they mentioned before snapping back to the conversation with the realization that I missed a lot of what they said. This would also happen frequently while reading, causing me to need to re-read large swaths of text. This was especially bad while trying to read textbooks, specifically my history textbook. No matter what I did or how much I procrastinated, I could not get myself to focus on reading my history textbook.
Poor concentration is one of the symptoms of ADHD.
My room was almost never clean. I would shove school assignments into my backpack and I wouldn't care if they got folded or crumpled. My desk contained a random assortment of knickknacks, and the walls in my room had a chaotic pairing of school papers and photos. I saved everything on my computer to the desktop. I would get holes in my shirts and jackets and I would continue to wear them. I'd purposefully leave text messages unread so I knew I needed to respond to them which resulted in me not responding to people for days at a time sometimes. I was never able to follow a schedule, despite my numerous attempts. I didn't take a single note in school because I knew I would never look at it again. I always had to make my own mistakes instead of learning from the mistakes of others.
Disorganization is one of the symptoms of ADHD.
This all exploded in my face (almost literally) one day when I was preparing to bake something. I had just pushed the button to preheat the oven, gotten distracted by something else, and then my cousin came over and asked if we wanted to go out and do something. I said sure because it's not like I have anything... important going on... I realized halfway to wherever we were going that I left the oven on, and we hurried home. I could not believe I had forgotten something as important as leaving the oven on. This combined with the fact that I was about to bring a child into the world made me consider that I might need help. Something might be psychologically wrong with my brain.
The test was actually quite simple. I was in my mid twenties when I went to go and get tested. They basically handed me a sheet of paper that said "on a scale of 1 to 5, how often do you do the following?" There was a couple of questions on there I hadn't even considered, such as "when having a conversation with someone, how often do you try and finish their sentence or talk over them?" Turns out it was a lot and it's made me very aware of how much I do this without even realizing it.
After speaking with the psychiatrist they recommended I start on Adderall, and I've been taking it ever since.
It's a very weird feeling to depend on a medication to like, function as an adult. All of these tasks that were so difficult for me to accomplish suddenly aren't.
It's like there was a giant brick wall in my brain that separated me and the task, and in order for me to do the task I had to climb the brick wall. It was exhausting and I could only accomplish a couple of things before getting overwhelmed. With Adderall, the wall is gone.
It's like my brain is in a fog and everything is blurry and taking Adderall is like putting on a pair of glasses.
It's like preparing to take a scenic photo of a mountain with a DSLR camera and Adderall is like twisting the lens into focus.
It's kind of insane to me that this is how normal people operate, and it took me having a child to realize that something might be wrong.
These behaviors, of course, aren't completely gone. I just understand what they are and why they're there and can avoid situations to prevent them from manifesting. For example, I try and avoid playing new video games unless I know it's something that I want to get sucked into for 2 weeks. I know my brain will hyper-fixate on it and I won't start it unless I know that I have the time.
I know that I need to write certain things down or else I WILL forget them. I know that I need to accomplish most tasks straight away or I'll forget that I need to do them. I'm more careful of the things that I promise because I'll forget that I promised to do something.
Sometimes I wish I could be normal and like... remember things, but I know my limitations now and I'm thankful that I have Adderall to help me have a less chaotic life.