It’s like having a TV in my mind. I’m supposed to be watching the Math channel while I’m in Math class, but instead I’m on the out-the-window channel watching a squirrel run up a tree or I’m on the dance channel, figuring out a new routine for the revue.
That’s – kind of – how Kavi Sharma explains her ADHD to her friends in her journal. And it’s pretty close to accurate, actually. I live with ADHD too and I can agree that it’s really hard to keep my brain on the channel it’s supposed to be on unless it happens to be something I love to do.
Living with ADHD can be both a blessing and a curse. Some days, I get absolutely nothing done because I can’t keep my focus where it’s supposed to be and I end up starting four or five projects because I can’t stick with just one. This is when you’ll hear me tell you to please wait a minute or two, let me finish what I’ve started or I’ll never get the train of thought back to finish it.
The other side of the coin is hyper focusing. Getting so involved in the project that I’m doing that I’ll do nothing else until I finish said project. This means I might manage to clean an entire room or bake four kinds of cookies in one day before my focus breaks. It works to my advantage sometimes, I can get a lot done when the hyper focus and motivation both kick in at once.
There’s more to ADHD than just focus or lack of focus though – the answer I didn’t have in college to why I didn’t need caffeine to survive finals? My ‘normal’ is like being caffeine buzzed. If I drink caffeinated beverages, I slow down and even fall asleep. For me, this also means things like night time cold meds that are intended to knock me out have no effect.
Why I sit here and worry that my friends don’t want me around when they have other plans for the day? That one’s called Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria. And it’s a nuisance like you wouldn’t believe. I don’t actually want to be upset when my friends have other plans or feel like someone hates me because they didn’t answer when I texted/said something. My brain just dumps every reason someone could have to hate me at once and I have to find my way to the reality of the situation – that not everything has to include me and whoever I was talking to probably didn’t hear me.
Seeing Kavi Sharma’s story include her having ADHD felt like looking in a mirror. She reminds me so much of myself. She’s not trying to be a bad student, she’s just so excited for what she wants to do that her brain won’t let her focus on anything else. Hyperfixation at its best and worst.
Her journal didn’t outright call it ADHD, but please, don’t invalidate me or anyone else by telling us that it isn’t there. We see ourselves in Kavi and it hurts that people insist she can’t really have ADHD because it wasn’t outright named when it’s so clearly there. In how she behaves, how she feels. It’s all right there. Clear as day.
Thank you, AG, for giving us Kavi ♥