Growing Up I Always Wanted To Be Poorly Understood By Science

This can be intersectional with other parts of the neurodivergent community but...

Having ADHD is like:

*stims* wait shit I look stupid *stops stimming* no wait shit now I can’t concentrate

“How was your day?” “Oh uh....(wait...how was my day?)” *windows shut down noise*

Alternatively: “How was your day?” “Okay so in history class we learned...” *insert essay here*

We have already talked about this on multiple occasions and I remember it in great detail what do you mean you forgot???

We have already talked about this? Uh oh.

Wow a block of text on a screen! I wish I could absorb any of this :)

Wow 100 tabs open at a time I wish I could prioritize any of this :)

Wow I have been working for hours and I haven’t received any reward chemicals (tm) I still have plenty of time today but the lack of getting anything Done makes me want to just lie down and not do it again

Wait it’s lunch time already?

I opened my conversation application and replied to things. My duty of communicating for the day is complete,,,

Spending ten minutes typing a single response so it’s short but says the right thing

I was standing too close because I got wrapped up in what you were saying I am so sorry I’m not trying to be rude

I was standing too close to that edge of the table and I fucking bumped into it AGAIN this is the third time TODAY and the tenth time this WEEK

*reciting order in my head so I don’t freeze up and forget when I get to the counter*

Someone said something slightly negative about me and now I want to explode

Having the same ten reactions for everything because those are the ones that communicate the most engagement (I promise I’m listening aaaaaa)

*checks autism symptom list* *checks autism symptom list* *che

You can’t take me on errends I am trying to work >:( *has not done anything for the past three hours*

*curls toes in shoes*

My ears feel like they’re being stuffed with thunderstorms if you don’t turn that noise off so help me I will leave (or worse, there is no noise and I just sort of have to sit there with overstimulated ears and dead air)

*makes a joke that goes over everyone’s head*

*laughs at joke I didn’t understand*

*miscommunicates something* *is not given the indication that the explanation was understood* *worries about being misinterpeteted*

*Throws essay onto table* have I mentioned?? My new hyperfixation?? It’s spy time. *james bond theme*

That’s Louis Rossman, a repair technician and YouTuber, who went viral recently for railing against Apple. Apple purposely charges a lot for repairs and you either have to pay up or buy a new device. That’s because Apple withholds necessary tools and information from outside repair shops. And to think, we were just so close to change.

Follow @the-future-now

if someone told me their pronouns were attack/helicopter I would just use them

pro tip if you start saying hewwo as a joke it will eventually come to be your standard greeting for all loved ones 

Why You Never Wear A Red Shirt And Khaki Pants At Target.

Do you like poems?

yes! my favorites are The Tiger and the unnamed werewolf fridge poem

Do you have ADHD? Well, may I suggest that you do The Thing right fucking now?

So, I have pretty crippling ADHD to the point that I can't think of a single aspect of my life it hasn't influenced. I also have a shiny medical diagnosis and have since I was seven. I'm in my 30s now. Yet in all that time, with 20+ years of therapy, lots of different meds, and a shit ton of the "why can't you just______" thrown at me by family and authority figures, it wasn't until recently that I truly grasped what time blindness means for me, an ADHD sufferer (yes I am going with sufferer cuz it makes me fucking suffer) in daily life. There's no Later with ADHD. If you know anything about ADHD, you know there's really only things that have happened, what's happening, and an idea of things you want to do with no concrete reality of future things.

And there's lots of cute things you can do to try and fight this. Lists, alarms, clacky bracelets with tasks on them. But all of these things imply that I, the ADHD sufferer, have enough executive functioning to remember to do them. Guess what? I don't. I have next to nothing and I'm lurching from impulse to impulse like a drug addict stumlbing towards a hit. Now, why's this matter? Because sometimes, there's an impulse to Do The Thing that is an actual responsible thing - pick something up off the floor, wash a dish, run an errand, feed a pet, anything even remotely responsible really - just like the impulse to go get a snack or to watch just one more episode of that show that's holding me hostage.

And before I really admitted to myself that my ADHD was a fucking disability and that I was suffering, I'd feel that impulse and go "oh, that's good, I'll do it in a minute" and it would never ever get done. Now? Now I understand, that minute is NEVER coming. It's never going to happen because there is NO SUCH THING as Later for me as an ADHD person. There's only the impulse.

So what have I started to do? Well, it sucks and I hate it but I've started treating the responsible impulses like the candy/tv/fanfic/"ooh shiny" impulse as in a thing I must feed my nervous system the SECOND it happens. No wait, only do. And the thing is, once I started doing that, treating every responsible impulse with absolute immediacy because I had 100% accepted that Later does not exist, yall, shit started getting done. My room started being cleaner, the dishes started getting put away, my laundry started getting done. It was getting done in huge bursts at 2am but it was getting done because I had the thought and went "okay I'll do The Thing right the fuck now." Pausing loses momentum nothing's worse to an ADHD brain than lost momentum.

Of course, NTs tend to want you to do stuff on their schedule, their way. That's a problem of its own so to facilitate this coping mechanism I had to learn to say to the people around me "whatever it is you are asking of me will have to wait until I finish THIS TASK because if I dont see it through, it will NEVER get finished" when following through on the impulse to Do The Thing Right the Fuck Now. Because it won't. If I lose flow, that's it. It's all over. Even writing this post. I had the idea, and now I'm writing it. If I stop it'll be gone. It's a fucking superpower really, both great and terrible. The thing is that harnessing it takes some willingness and an acceptance that us ADHDs do not and will not EVER function in the time stream like other people and a willingness to say so.

Right the Fuck Now belongs to the ADHDs. It's really the only concept of time we truly have. No reason not to fucking use it.

I want to prove a point to a coworker of mine.

Pretend this post is the coronavirus.

If you see this on your dash, just reblog it.

Let’s show them how quickly this virus can spread from just one person.