Life with ADHD is not an unusual experience.<\/p>\n
When I tell people about the way my life is and they say, \u201cThat must be difficult.\u201d I\u2019m never sure how to respond to that.<\/p>\n
Maybe it is, it\u2019s how it\u2019s always been for me. It\u2019s no more difficult than it ever was.<\/p>\n
But yes, I see how my life is different from the lives that others live.<\/p>\n
The truth<\/p>\n
The truth is that I am jealous of the lives of others in that they seem to have it easy, all that remembering what it was they were doing and stuff. I\u2019m jealous of the way they just make appointments and keep them. I\u2019m jealous of the way they cannot say the things that just pop into their minds (or maybe those things don\u2019t actually pop into their minds, I don\u2019t know).<\/p>\n
And jealousy does not become me. I don\u2019t look good wearing jealousy.<\/p>\n
I look so bad \u2026<\/p>\n
I have spent a great deal of my life trying to remember what I\u2019m doing. And as I said (before), I\u2019ve spent a great deal of my life looking for things I\u2019ve misplaced. I\u2019ve missed my share of appointments and spent a good amount of time trying very hard to remember to both make, and get to appointments.<\/p>\n
And I\u2019ve spent more than a little bit of time learning to keep my mouth shut when my brain gets all excited about some clever thing it has thought up. Well, also I\u2019ve spent time learning to edit things on the fly, things I\u2019ve already started saying.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve even managed to train myself to accept looking stupid when I start saying something really clever, realise it may not be a smart thing to say and change it to something less inflammatory \u2026 but lame. I\u2019ve got the \u201cI\u2019m an idiot\u201d look down pat. It\u2019s easy, since I already feel like an idiot for having gotten myself into the situation in the first place.<\/p>\n
But, I don\u2019t care<\/p>\n
And therein lies the lesson. I have grown to realise that caring about how I look to others is not worth the effort or energy it takes. Yes, I want to look like I\u2019m clever, because \u2026 dammit, I am clever. But I am okay with looking like a clever fool, or maybe someone who is a fool, but is clearly smarter than expected.<\/p>\n
And I think that sums me up pretty well. I\u2019m a man with ADHD and that means I do and say a lot of things that I wish I hadn\u2019t done and said.<\/p>\n
But,<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s something important: I, am smart. I\u2019m able to deal with these limits and problems and still survive and even solve problems better than others might have done.<\/p>\n
I hate the oversimplified suggestion that ADHD is just a different way of thinking, it seems dismissive to me. But in its simplicity resides a grain of truth.<\/p>\n
I am different from others. My differences are that I have problems that most others don\u2019t face. But not one of those problems is that I\u2019m stupid.<\/p>\n
I have problems, I\u2019m smart, I deal, this is my life. Same as it ever was.<\/p>\n
By Kelly Babcock<\/p>\n