© Jeff Siegel, 2010

He Said / She Said: Examining the ADHD Life – The “Education” of an ADHDer, Part I

8:55pm Jeff:    Should I just jump into the deep end? I got stories.

8:59pm Zoë: Be my guest!

9:04pm Jeff:     I’ll begin with the overview. I drove the teachers crazy. I wouldn’t pay attention and when I did, I would give the right answer and then go back to daydreaming. By the time I was 13 years old or so, I was becoming a truant, spending more days out of school than in.

So here’s today’s pet peeve: I’m at a crossroad.  I’ve been working hard at overcoming my ADHD deficits; I’ve come a long way, baby. But how do I know how far I’ve come?

Here are the stages I’ve gone through:

For weeks now, I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a blog post on taking a day off from ADHD. Try as I might, I haven’t been able to envision it.

Still, I do fantasize about having one – just one – day free of ADHD. What, oh what, would that be like?

Photo by Zoë Kessler ©2010

Yesterday, I needed to borrow my friend’s wheelbarrow. I tried to shove the wheelbarrow in the back of my van. I don’t know about you, but my spatial orientation isn’t always the best. I don’t know if this is an ADHD thing or not, but I suspect, from all that I’ve heard about our “clumsiness” and our being “accident prone,” that having poor spatial orientation is part of the deal.

Okay, here’s the thing: it’s been about four years since my ADHD diagnosis. And although I’ve already chronicled all of the improvements I think I’ve made in my life, there is still one niggling detail.

In situations of high stress, like a high-strung thoroughbred at the starting gate of the Queen’s Cup, jockey pulling on the reins, a silver bit cutting painfully into my flesh, I try to keep my big, fat, mouth shut. It’s all I can do to hang on without bolting out the gate. Meaning: blurting something stupid, irrelevant, unconnected, or that I completely didn’t mean.

Sitting on my balcony, drinking coffee and enjoying the sunshine, it suddenly occurred to me how much my balcony garden is a reflection of my ADHD life.

Stairway to Pesto

ADHD enthusiasm

This first occurred to me when I realized that, yet again, my natural enthusiasm overwhelmed the rational part of my brain. I have over 100 – that’s 100 – basil plants on my tiny 7’ x 5′ balcony. Potted basil plants march up the emergency staircase, to my neighbor’s apartment above. I call it the “Stairway to Pesto.”  What was I thinking?

I have no idea where I’m going to transplant the tiny seedlings. Once again, I followed my heart, jumped in without thinking it through, like so many other times in my life. Will my plants die? Will this be another unfinished project, another failure? I’ve learned to enjoy the good things in life in the moment, knowing all the while that many good intentions, enthusiastic beginnings, come to naught in the end.