I’ve had a massive bust up with the neighbours. They really loathe me.
Last month, when reversing my car out of a tight spot, I ran over the gardener’s hedge trimmer. I tried to reverse it out of the same tight spot two more times, and hit the cleaner’s car and knocked down my mailbox. I knew I couldn’t get it out of that spot after the first attempt, but I tried twice more anyway, and tripled the damage.
I employ the cleaner and the gardener because I can’t bear to do routine jobs. The boredom is physically painful.
Yesterday, I impulse bought the Dungeons and Dragons 5e core rules gift set. It cost $170. I don’t play Dungeons and Dragons.
At work, I run a team of over a dozen software engineers, plus I also develop the software myself. There are five releases happening before Christmas, plus several more in January and a major infrastructure migration happening at the same time. I dart round from project to project, asking the stupid questions that I think need to be asked; questions that everyone else is too embarrassed, or too sensible, to ask themselves
In my spare time, I’ve written the first draft of Softening. It took three months and weighs in at 95,000 words. In the meantime, I’ve abandoned a professional exam I shoud have been taking, the garden looks like a jungle and the swimming pool has gone green.
Welcome to my ADHD
In the book Your Brain Is Not Broken, Tamara Rosier asks us to consider ‘What is your ADHD like?’ Tamara’s ADHD is like a naughty elf, the sort of mischievous creature that sneaks in at night and rearranges all your belongings, hides the important documents and changes the dates on the calendar, so you miss all your appointments. Cheeky.
That’s not how I experience my ADHD. Mine is a raging lightning storm. It’s dark and threatening, but glorious and exhilarating. It’s hugely energetic but can easily veer out of control. It’s truly awe inspiring and wonderful, but has the capacity for destruction, and is dangerous when it’s too near. The eye of the storm is quiet and peaceful, but that can change in a heart beat, then storm is back, and it’s furious.
There are peaceful days when the storm is on the horizon, and I can see the lightning at a safe distance. It’s mild and kind of interesting. Then there are days when the storm is overhead, and it’s all flash and thunder. Those days can be exciting and a lot of things happen; the sort of days that memories (and memoirs) are made of. Unfortunately, they can also be utterly destructive; relationships are detonated, and harsh words rain down from the dark clouds. Then the peaceful days return, and the job is to repair the damage. Sometimes it can’t repaired – it has to stay broken.
I saw my neighbour again today. I went round to bring him a bag of freshly picked vegetables from my garden. A peace offering. I took the dog with me for emotional support. My neighbour still looked pretty angry. He was in the wrong, but I went too far. He said I needed psychological help. That was insulting but accurate – I do see a psychiatrist. We agreed to talk again in the new year. So that’s booked in; another round of damage repair, now that the ADHD storm has passed.
Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash
