This summer, I confirmed what I’ve suspected for a few years: I have ADHD. Specifically, the primarily inattentive type, formerly called ADD.
Someone with the right background could unofficially diagnose me after reading one or two of my blog posts. Long-winded, disorganized posts full of bonus thoughts? Check. Thousands of words on topics of interest, possibly indicative of hyperfocus? Check. A flurry of posts, then months of radio silence? Check.
ADHD also explains some of the hallmarks of my writing style (for better or worse), specifically my deep and abiding love of parentheses, forward slashes, and em-dashes to convey all of my tangents. (I swear, I will never forgive AI for tainting em dashes. Back off, robots. Writers and neurodivergents staked our claim on these first.)
I’m on a post-diagnosis emotional rollercoaster:
- relief at finally having answers
- smugness at being right about my own brain (lol)
- grief at lost time/opportunities
- eagerness to learn more about myself and how to work with my brain
- cognitive overload with how much there is to learn
- hope that I can improve my life with this knowledge and help my kids get support sooner than I did if they have it too
- fear that I won’t actually be able to improve my life
- more grief realizing that many of my faded friendships can be attributed to ADHD in one way or another
- inspiration to revive this silly lil blog
- exhaustion at all of it
- dread anticipating the inevitable comments from friends/family expressing doubt or straight-up dismissal (“but you did so well in school” “everybody has ADHD these days” etc)
- so, so proud of myself for doing the best I could all those years not even knowing what I didn’t know
On reflection, I’ve realized that ADHD has strengthened my creativity and resilience, among other things, but it’s also presented some seriously frustrating obstacles and challenges that I’ve been navigating all my life. I won’t get into all of it here because to be honest, I’m still unpacking the diagnosis and I have a new revelation about it every day.
One major revelation has been that I’ve been collecting and using coping skills my whole life without realizing that’s what I was doing or why I was doing it. I’ve been life hacking my way through my neurodivergence, and it’s exhausting.
I think I was able to mask/cope for as long as I did through a combination of:
- societal behavioral expectations of girls/women
- unhealthy perfectionism
- twice-exceptionality
- symptoms being “normal” baseline due to undiagnosed ADHD family members
- the fact that most early ADHD research focused on hyperactive boys
In fact, I never even considered ADHD until motherhood, a teacher professional development workshop on twice exceptionality with Emily Kircher-Morris, and seeing parts of myself reflected in my husband’s ADHD diagnosis. And then it took me almost three years to finally follow through with a neuropsych evaluation.
(Side note: Maybe they should factor in how long it takes you to schedule an appointment once you start suspecting you have it. Time blindness + poor executive function skills + inconsistent working memory + easily distracted + motherhood + full plate = major lag.)
I have a blog post or two in the works connecting the dots between my ADHD and librarianship/teaching/reading. And in classic ADHD fashion, I’m either going to inundate this blog with several posts over the next few weeks or go dark for a while, TBD, but now we all know why I’m like that.
paige in the library 