#and a few other perks
- I don’t even remember putting that thing down but now it’s not in my hand and I don’t know where it went
- ‘what do you mean you can just think about nothing? what’s that like? I don’t understand’
- *tuning out of a conversation halfway through somebody else’s sentence because I just thought of something interesting*
- carrying my psychiatrist’s business card with me at all times because I see her once a month and every time I go I forget what floor her office is on. I’ve been there 8 times
- ‘Between A & B, A would be the right thing to do’ *a cascading thought process that takes a few seconds tops, justifying option B* ‘actually B would be the right thing to do’
- somebody else, later: why did you think B was the right thing to do??
- me: …. it’s not important, I’ll know better next time
- (spoiler: I won’t know better next time)
- I know you already told me this thing like 12 times but can you tell me again just one more time because I forgot
- it’s not that I forgot that I wasn’t supposed to do this thing. it’s just that in that particular moment i thought it was okay to do it anyway for reasons that would take 48 minutes to explain even though it only took me 3 seconds to justify it in my thoughts, so it’s easier for me to just say ‘I forgot’
- ‘I already told you that’ ‘really? I must have forgotten, i’m sorry’ ‘it was FIVE MINUTES AGO. in this SAME CONVERSATION’
- this internal conversation:
- me: I feel motivated to do this responsible thing
- me: if I don’t do this responsible thing right now I will get distracted and forget to do it for another 5 hours
- me: so I should do this thing right this second, there is nothing stopping me
- me: after I finish this one cell phone game
- me, 5 hours later: I KNEW THIS WOULD HAPPEN
- almost flunking a class because I straight up didn’t know any homework had been assigned despite loving the class and always attending
- trusting the memory of literally anyone else over my own memory
- intending to do something for days. sometimes months. never doing it
- *cuddling somebody* mm this is nice … *2 seconds later* bored now
- somebody is mad at me. I might as well fucking d i e
- the options in company are: overshare about the one thing I care about or not talk at all
- insensitive or inattentive? YOU decide (and when you tell me that i hurt your feelings and I didn’t notice I’ll rejection sensitive dysphoria into fantasies of disappearing forever)
- being excellent at my job for months on end, doing everything right and everything well, and then suddenly & without explanation being t h e w o r s t at it for several weeks, making dumb mistakes everywhere for no discernible reason
- when asked to explain something: well it all started when I was a baby
- ‘they don’t need that much explanation’ well YOU tell ME where to start b/c I have no fucking clue tbh
- i can’t throw away anything b/c when I look at it I remember all the sentimental reasons I keep it around and they seem just as important as actually needing it and when I close the storage box back up I forget I had it in the first place until the next time I try to get rid of my clutter and repeat this process
- i wasnt’ idle for a second all day and yet I didn’t accomplish a n y t h i n g
- am i a speed-reader or was I so impatient for what came next that I read only half a page and then skipped to the next one?
- getting excited about a project, starting it, then racing to finish it as fast as I can because when I get bored I’ll abandon it and never go back. must beat the boredom
- edit my fics? working twice on the same idea? /uproarious laughter
- well I fucked that up. too bad I can never rework it because I no longer have passionate energy for it
- me, opening a bottle of adhd meds: I don’t have adhd. I’m just a lazy bum who doesn’t try hard enough
I’ve seen so many people reblog this with ‘I don’t have ADHD but I relate to all of this’ and I just wanted to add:
this list is mostly about inattention, overthinking things, and failure to follow through.
at its heart, adhd is theinability to pick what your attention is locked onto, sometimes combined with a need to move constantly (hyperactivity). This manifests as:
- lively internal life + rapid thought & intuitive leaps of cognition - good when being creative, bad when trying to make a logical decision
- overthinking things
- impulsive behavior
- short attention span + being easily distracted
- unnaturally long attention span + inability to notice outside stimuli
- short term memory dysfunction
- executive dysfunction
- no sense of priority (everything is equally important)
- no sense of time in relation to self (cannot effectively tell how long an activity will take or develop a sense of urgency based on a deadline until the deadline is perilously close or already passed)
- failure to follow through (leaving work incomplete)
- forgetting to remember/remembering tasks at inappropriate times
- intrusive thoughts
And pretty much everyone experiences one or all of these things at times, and these symptoms can spring from other causes than ADHD (for instance, executive dysfunction accompanies depression and anxiety as well).
But adhd people have this happen so constantly and so intrusively that we cannot complete basic tasks, even if we want to:
- The only thing consistent about us is inconsistent results: sometimes we’re on time, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re reliable, sometimes we’re not. sometimes we’re studious, sometimes we’re not … (and trust me we’re not enjoying it any more than you are)
- We fail classes, we drop out of college, we lose jobs, and no matter how much we try, we cannot fix it.
- We can’t just remove distractions - our brains are a distraction.
- We can’t just ‘try harder’ - our wayward mind might be focusing on our studying today, but tomorrow it might not. The same effort level will have wildly different results on different days because our attention cooperated … or didn’t.
- it is literally impossible for us to choose our focus. pretty much ever.
Another common tag? ‘I wanted to read all of this but I couldn’t’. that’s adhd.
So this list is pretty relateable, even if you don’t have adhd. But if this happens to you to the point that you’re getting in trouble at school or your job and you’re pissing off your friends? might be worth looking into what’s going on with you.
