#women with adhd
They don’t hate you.
They don’t hate you.
They don’t hate you.
Probably.
I think.
Perhaps.
Maybe.
Probably have stuck around all these years
Out of obligation.
As if they signed a legally binding contract
When they entered the friendship
Breaking it is punishable by death!
I’m a 40 year old woman, and a week ago, I started taking medication for ADHD. This diagnosis did not come as a surprise—I had to push for testing—but my suspicions had slowly been growing.
“But you did so well in school.”
“But everyone procrastinates sometimes.”
“But trauma has the same symptoms.”
But nothing.
Maybe I was just good at masking things. Maybe I always had enough time or deadlines or interest or coping methods to get by. Maybe there’s a reason my trauma symptoms look like ADHD symptoms. Maybe I grew up in a time, a culture, a household, where nobody really thought about digging into mental health. Maybe I was fine.
But it was still hard. And I haven’t been “fine” for a while. Those deadlines, that free time, those coping mechanisms compressed and disintegrated amid parenthood and a graduate program and family crisis and a pandemic, until my window of tolerance for over- or under-stimulation grew so small as to be disabling. My coping mechanisms became less about function, and more about survival.
I’ve been unconsciously self-medicating with caffeine and sugar for a long time. I pick up new hobbies like I’m tasting samples at Costco. I can’t sleep without white noise, or study without music, because my brain is too loud. I’ve always done my best work in the frantic early morning hours before an assignment is due. And I hate it. Have a long conversation with me, and it will fork like a strange and glorious Wikipedia rabbithole. I have to write lists—sooooo many lists. And I forget what I’m supposed to be doing as soon as I open a new browser tab, or walk through a doorway, or have a stray, interesting thought.
I don’t expect medication to magically change all that. I’m still going to be me. I still am me. But it’s been a little quieter inside my head this week. And I can see my window of tolerance opening up around me.
And that’s a terrifying, beautiful thing.
<3
Being diagnosed as an adult was life-changing for me. I hope the same is true for you!
Being on adderall for the first time ever is shocking. My appetite right now is literally a fraction of what it was when I was binge eating on anti depressants a few years ago.
