Raising Adult ADHD Awareness
Every school report you ever got said that you were clearly an intelligent kid but that you just won't apply yourself to the work and that if you only put in the effort you could achieve so much more. If only this had occurred to you! You'd be a grade A student.
Every job you've ever had ends the same way - you're shown the front door. Whether it's working in a restaurant, in a shop or in an office, you go through jobs like other people go through toilet rolls. Ultimately you end up working for yourself because there's no-one left to hire you.
You're in the middle of doing something and then a thought occurs to you, so you sit down on the couch to look it up on your smartphone and now it's three hours later and you know everything there is to know about Panamanian golden frogs.
You get angry easily. Angry at people you don't know, angry at people you do, angry at people you love. You don't mean to, but a switch just flicks in your head and you're suddenly being horrible.
You make lists of things that need to happen but find yourself incapable of working up the enthusiasm to do any of them. New things get added to the list but it's a rare day when anything gets ticked off. The to-do list simply serves as a reminder of what a failure you are.
You might not be able to work up the enthusiasm to do something useful around the house, but when you're interested in something it's like you enter an isolation chamber and the outside world goes silent. Then you wish that you could do the thing you're interested in as a job.
You like driving, you think you're pretty good at it, but somehow you keep getting tickets for speeding. You're also one of the unluckiest drivers on the road because you keep getting into accidents. It's like your car's magnetic and it irresistibly attracts idiots to you.
You're overweight, probably obese and you know how to fix it. So how come you're drawn to that doughnut cabinet like a fly to shit every time you fill up your beaten-up car with petrol. Also - why do you not feel even remotely guilty about eating that four pack of sugar-glazed doughnuts either?
You see people sitting on park benches and watching the world go by, or lying on a beach just relaxing and you have no idea how they do it. You can't sit still for more than 30 seconds before you have to get up and do something else. The thought of sitting in a meeting is like submitting to torture.
Sure you put the thing in a safe place. Now you have no idea where the safe place is. You spend your life doing laps of your home looking for car keys, phones, TV remotes, purses, wallets, medication and glasses. If you can pick it up and move it somewhere - it's probably lost.